Kuban animal rights activist Dzhalaganiya faces new charges from a colleague in Stavropol.

Police officers visited the home of Tikhoretsk animal rights activist Denis Dzhalaganiya in connection with a new denunciation from Oksana Zhiteneva, head of the Stavropol animal rights organization. This time, Zhiteneva accused Dzhalaganiya of embezzling activists' money.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," Oksana Zhiteneva, head of the Stavropol animal rights organization, at the end of September accused Denis Dzhalaganiya, a Kuban public animal welfare inspector, of slander, insults, and discrediting the army, asking the FSB to open a criminal case against him. In October 2024, the court had already fined Dzhalaganiya for discrediting the army due to pacifist posts in an animal rights group chat room. According to the activist, the case was also based on a denunciation. The police declined to open a case against Dzhalaganiya, and Zhiteneva also filed a complaint against the district police officer who made the decision.

The new complaint filed by Zhiteneva against Dzhalaganiya concerns his trip to Stavropol Krai to visit his 95-year-old mother, Alla Chernova, a 68-year-old pensioner accused of killing her daughter with her dogs. In May, a court in Stavropol found Chernova guilty of causing the death of a nine-year-old girl by negligence, who died in a dog attack, and sentenced her to a suspended sentence of eighteen months.

While Alla Chernova was in custody, animal rights activists, confident of her innocence, raised money to pay for her lawyer's fees, buy groceries for her 95-year-old mother, and buy care packages for herself. At the time, Denis Dzhalaganiya, a public animal control inspector from Tikhoretsk, said that during the investigation, at the request of animal rights activists, he traveled to Stavropol, where he spoke with Chernova's mother and her neighbor. According to them, no one had seen the dogs that attacked the child, and neither Chernova nor her neighbors had received any response from officials to their requests for the capture of stray dogs, sent long before the tragedy.

Jalaganiya made no secret of the fact that the money for his trip had been raised by other animal rights activists interested in the case. For their own investigation and to gather evidence to prove the pensioner's innocence, they asked Jalaganiya to record what neighbors and Chernova's mother were saying, as well as to film the area where the dogs allegedly lived and where they attacked the girl. They also asked Jalaganiya to deliver groceries to the elderly woman.

"I boarded the train and went to the address. I met with people and Alla Chernova's 95-year-old mother. I gave her a bag of groceries, as the woman, due to her age, was unable to go to the store herself and her sole breadwinner was her daughter, who was in prison at the time. Upon arrival, I wrote to the animal rights activists in a chat about my trip, and they thanked me for my time. Then Alla was released, and that's where the whole story ended six months ago." "And now it suddenly turns out, thanks to Zhiteneva's latest denunciation, that I allegedly embezzled activists' money. But how could I have embezzled it if they asked me to go and sent the money themselves, and the trip took place, and I fulfilled all their requests?" Dzhalaganiya is perplexed.

He showed the police videos filmed during the trip, confirming his misuse of the funds, including handing over a bag of groceries to Chernova's mother. He also added that Zhiteneva personally paid for his travel home to Tikhoretsk from Stavropol, buying a ticket for 2,000 rubles.

"It was a public initiative. The activists asked me to do it as an activist, and I did what they asked," Denis Dzhalaganiya explained to the police officer.

He noted that he never received a ruling denying the criminal case for discrediting the army. The police officer who visited the activist on October 16 stated, "To which the officer replied that he hadn't processed Zhiteneva's first complaint and that the decision was with another officer who had handled that complaint."

Oksana Zhiteneva declined to comment to the "Caucasian Knot." Dzhalaganiya told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent that he was tired of these false accusations against him and intended to file a complaint against Zhiteneva himself for false accusations and slander.