(Reuters) – A U.S. woman was detained and fined by a Russian court on Wednesday for walking a calf on Moscow’s Red Square that she said she had bought to save from slaughter, Russian state media reported.
Alicia Day, 34, was fined 20,000 roubles ($285) for obstructing pedestrians in an unauthorised protest and sentenced to 13 days of “administrative arrest” on a separate charge of disobeying police orders.
“I bought the calf so that it wouldn’t be eaten,” TASS news agency quoted her as saying.
Video shared by state media showed Day explaining that she had got a driver to bring the calf to Red Square by car. “I wanted to show it a beautiful place in our beautiful country,” she said.
The U.S. embassy did not immediately comment when asked about the case.
Day had been living in a suburb of Moscow on a tourist visa, the RIA news agency said, and had carried out similar acts of protest before in other countries.
In 2019, the Daily Mail newspaper reported that she had “rescued” a pig she named Jixy Pixy from slaughter in western England, brought it to London by taxi and taken it for walks and restaurant meals, but had to hand it to an animal welfare charity after her landlord discovered she was keeping it in a small apartment.
($1 = 70.15 roubles)
(Reporting by Caleb Davis; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)
