Indian Supreme Court’s order seeks to take bite out of stray dog problem. Observers say it’s mostly bark.
Sunil Ghosh/Hindustan Times via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — The Supreme Court of India issued an order directing all states and union territories to remove stray dogs from public spaces — including schools, universities, hospitals, and transport hubs — sparking a debate about animal welfare.
The move came through a suo motu petition, where the court takes on a matter of public interest without any official petition, and was said to be in response to the alarming number of dog-bite incidents and the threat to human safety, particularly children.
The order called for dogs that are taken off the street for preventative medical treatments — including those related to rabies — to not be returned. They are meant to be shifted to a “designated shelter,” as per the judgement, because India’s 2023 law doesn’t allow culling.
The conditions and capacity of these shelters to host millions of India’s stray dogs has been questioned by activists and protestors.
Although some animal rights groups have noted a need for a solution to the problems caused by the dogs, some have also called the proposed approach into question.
The judgment announced on Nov. 7 cites several media reports and incidents, including one with a Welsh entrepreneur who was bitten by a stray dog during a morning run in Bengaluru, a city in India’s south.
India had an estimated 9 million dogs in their 2019 livestock census; other surveys done in 2021 estimated the number much higher, at 52 million. In 2024, the country recorded 3.7 million dog bite incidents and 54 human deaths from rabies. Estimated cases of rabies have declined by 75% between 2003 and 2023.
“These numbers have been falling steadily for two decades — the court orders do not seem to have taken this official and research data into consideration,” said Dr. Krithika Srinivasan, professor of political ecology at the University of Edinburgh.
Until now, India’s stray dog management was guided by the Animal Birth Control (ABC) Rules, under which stray dogs were to be sterilized, vaccinated and dewormed before being released back into the same locality.
Though the recent judgment calls for the dogs not to be released back at all.
“Stable dog populations are less likely to bite and transmit rabies,” Srinivasan said. “When you start removing them, you create what ecologists call a perturbation effect.”
Ayesha Christina Benn, founder of Neighbourhood Woof and a longtime partner of the local urban body in implementing the ABC program, warned that infrastructure simply cannot handle the court’s directive.
Benn says the order isn’t practical. Delhi alone has a million dogs, and almost 20 centers to house them. “These centers themselves lack compliance,” Benn said. “We had to tear ours down and rebuild it to meet the norms.”
Her NGO currently receives the equivalent of about $11 per dog for sterilisation and vaccination — which is about two-thirds of the actual cost per dog. The government doesn’t have the necessary funds.
A similar directive was issued by the same court, in August, but on a smaller scale in Delhi National Capital Region. This directive was rescinded after protests from animal-rights groups.
In the current judgment, the court wants adequate fencing, boundary walls and gates around education institutes and hospitals within eight weeks.
Akanksha Majumdar, a lawyer by training, said, “The judgment is a step in the right direction, but detached from the ground reality.”
She runs an organization called The Philanthropist and the Happy Dog, which assists in the rescue and rehabilitation of community animals, including dogs and cats. Her group is “taking steps to file a review petition against the said order,” she said.
Srinivasan said she agreed that while the ABC policy’s implementation needs improvement, it has nonetheless been instrumental in bringing down rabies and dog population numbers in some regions.
She attributed the country’s progress to two key factors: the widespread availability of post-exposure prophylaxis for bite victims and the 2001 decision to end mass culling in favour of sterilisation and vaccination programmes.
Yet, despite the long-term decline, controversies around stray dogs have grown. Srinivasan warned that such incidents, while tragic, cannot be effectively addressed by policy decisions that are not based on long-term, nation-wide data and evidence that show which strategies have been successful.
Srinivasan said officials should focus on what has worked: Ensure human anti-rabies treatment is available across the country, avoid regular mass feeding of complete meals to prevent increases in dog population density in particular locations, and, of course, the vaccination-sterilization program.
And, to make them more effective, she said, officials should take the help of grassroots groups that work in the community and understand the dogs better.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during his press conference after the Summit of Collective Security Treaty Organization, on November 27, 2025 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Contributor/Getty Images
(LONDON) — President Vladimir Putin warned that Russia is ready to fight a war if Europe seeks one and claimed European countries are trying to make changes in President Donald Trump’s proposal on ending Russia’s war against Ukraine, ahead of his high-stakes meeting with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow on Tuesday.
“We can clearly see that these changes are aimed at only one thing: to block the entire peace process,” Putin said in remarks to reporters while accusing Europe of being “on the side of war.”
“We are not going to fight Europe, I have said this a hundred times. But if Europe suddenly wants to fight and starts, we are ready right now,” Putin said.
Russia would allow Europe to return to negotiations on Ukraine if it takes into account the realities on the ground, Putin said.
Putin’s meeting with Witkoff is underway, Russian state media TASS reported Tuesday night local time. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is also taking part.
Earlier, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the meeting had no time limit and would go on for “as long as necessary.”
Ahead of the meeting, the White House said it was “very optimistic,” as U.S. officials continue their push to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The sit-down follows a series of meetings between top U.S. and Ukrainian officials, during which the parties sought to revise the original peace-plan proposal presented by the Trump administration to Ukraine last month.
Witkoff and other top U.S. officials — including Kushner and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — met on Sunday in Florida with a Ukrainian delegation to attempt to find a deal that Ukraine and Russia might both accept to end the war.
“I think the administration feels very optimistic,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday, following the Florida meeting. “They had very good talks with the Ukrainians in Florida. And now, of course, Special Envoy Witkoff is on his way to Russia.”
The top Ukrainian official at the Florida talks said there had been progress, but, he added, “some issues still require further refinement.”
The Kremlin on Monday said a meeting between Witkoff and Putin was scheduled for Tuesday. Putin prepared in recent days by holding meetings with military commanders and a governor of a frontline territory, according to Russian officials.
“We have no doubt that this will be a very important step towards peace and a peaceful settlement,” Peskov told reporters in Moscow on Tuesday.
There was little expectation Putin would agree to a deal. The Russian leader signaled last week he would not compromise, repeating in hardline remarks his demand that Ukraine withdraw from territory he claims as Russian soil and saying it was “pointless” to negotiate with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Putin then on Monday claimed without evidence that Russian forces had taken control of two Ukrainian cities where intense fighting has been happening for weeks in the eastern part of the country, a move intended perhaps to burnish the perception of Russia’s leading position on the battlefield.
Zelenskyy, who, along with Trump, was not directly involved with the talks in Florida, met on Monday with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. The meetings in France were “substantive and important — above all, focused on the steps that bring a just peace closer,” he said on social media. Zelenskyy landed on Tuesday in Dublin, where he’s expected to meet with Taoiseach Micheal Martin, the Irish prime minister.
As Zelenskyy pushed for European unity against Russian aggression, members of his delegation in Florida were sending updates on what was being discussed. He said on Monday that there were still several “tough issues” to work through in the negotiations, but did not elaborate. Ukraine’s potential relinquishment of some of its territory to Russia was thought to be part of the talks.
Zelenskyy on Monday also said he, Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer had again been briefed by Witkoff and the head of the Kyiv delegation, Rustem Umerov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.
“Over two very productive days in the United States, we held many hours of meetings and negotiations,” Umerov said in a separate social media update on Monday. “We achieved significant progress, although some issues still require further refinement.”
Umerov and the rest of the negotiating team met with Zelenskyy in person on Tuesday, with the president saying they discussed “the matters that cannot be addressed over the phone.” He praised Ukrainian allies for their partnership. And he also accused Russia of beginning new disinformation campaigns prior to Putin’s meeting with Witkoff.
“Ukraine approaches all diplomatic efforts with utmost seriousness — we are committed to achieving a real peace and guaranteed security,” Zelenskyy said on social media. “This is exactly the level of commitment that must be compelled from the Russian side, and this task can be accomplished only together with our partners.”
The meeting in Moscow would be the sixth such Witkoff-Putin sit-down this year and it comes amid a redoubled effort by the White House to produce a peace deal in the almost 4-year-old conflict.
The meeting on Sunday included discussions of a revised 19-point peace plan that was developed a week ago during another round of American-Ukrainian talks in Geneva, Switzerland. Those talks reworked an earlier 28-point plan that the Trump administration had presented and that had alarmed Kyiv and European allies as heavily favoring Russia. Details about whether further revisions may have been made over the weekend had not been released as of Tuesday morning.
Speaking at the White House on Monday, Leavitt did not detail what the U.S. expected to happen during the negotiations in Moscow, instead deferring to those who would be at the meeting.
“We’ve put points on paper. Those points have been very much refined,” she said. “But as for the details, I will let the negotiators negotiate. But we do feel quite good, and we’re hopeful that this work can finally come to an end.”
ABC News’ Emily Chang and Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.
(LONDON and KYIV, Ukraine) — Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared last week to be cautiously optimistic on the U.S. 28-point peace plan to end his invasion of Ukraine, but statements made by his emissaries in the days since then have led some analysts to believe he thinks he can get a better deal.
“I believe that it could also form the basis for a final peace settlement, but this text has not been discussed with us in detail,” Putin told his Security Council on Friday.
Momentum has appeared to be building as U.S., European, Ukrainian and Russian representatives met first in Geneva, Switzerland, and then in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. U.S. President Donald Trump has now said a deal could be “very close” and has ordered his envoy Steve Witkoff to travel to Moscow next week to present the plan to Putin.
But despite the diplomatic flurry and public optimism, many close observers of Russia still doubt Putin is actually ready to take a deal now or sees much need to compromise.
“I see nothing at the moment that would force Putin to recalculate his goals or abandon his core demands,” Tatiana Stoyanova, founder of R.Politik and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center wrote on X.
“He feels more confident than ever about the battlefield situation and is convinced that he can wait until Kyiv finally accepts that it cannot win and must negotiate on Russia’s well-known terms,” Stoyanova said. “If the Americans can help move things in that direction — fine. If not, he knows how to proceed anyway.”
Boris Bondarev, a former Russian diplomat who quit in protest after Russia’s 2022 invasion, also told ABC News he thought it “most likely” that this latest round of negotiations will fizzle out with the combatants still far apart on key issues, as has been the case with previous efforts.
The new 19-point plan negotiated with Ukraine this week is highly unlikely to align with Moscow’s goals, Bondarev said. Even the original 28-point plan that Russia helped draw up with Witkoff “wasn’t fully acceptable to Russia in the first place,” he said, pointing to the Kremlin’s apparent hesitance to commit to the initial blueprint.
“Now it’s even less acceptable,” he said. “So, of course, they would not accept it.”
But Bondarev didn’t rule out entirely that Putin might lunge for a deal that contains many of his demands.
“Of course, we can and we should be ready for any surprises from the Kremlin,” he said. “They can still surprise sometimes.”
The original 28-point U.S. proposal that heavily favored Russia was revised down to 19, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials, during the Geneva negotiations.
Some of the most unacceptable points to Kyiv have been removed, according to sources familiar with the discussions, including a cap on Ukraine’s army and a war crimes amnesty. But it is not entirely clear what the new plan includes and the most intractable issues, including Ukraine ceding more unoccupied territory remain.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Wednesday again downplayed hopes for a deal, saying it was “too early to say” whether the warring parties are close to an accord. Russia’s deputy foreign minister has since said Moscow will not make any major concessions.
Previous rounds of talks have resoundingly failed. And, while the U.S. has been projecting hope, it’s unclear how serious Russia — which has been eking out battlefield gains — is about making peace.
“Putin does not want an agreement,” John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, said at an Atlantic Council event on Tuesday. “The only agreement he wants is diktat — a Ukrainian surrender. Otherwise, he wants to continue fighting.”
“I suspect if Ukraine had accepted those dreadful 28 points, Putin would come back for more,” Herbst said. “He realizes those 28 points reflected great flexibility moving his direction on the part of the United States, and he would say, ‘See what else we can get’.”
Putin’s long march The Kremlin has indicated that the new peace plan was discussed at the summit between Putin and Trump in Alaska in August.
Putin left Alaska with Trump’s endorsement of the “fantastic relationship” between the two presidents, having successfully neutralized Trump’s previous demand he agree an immediate ceasefire and pushing off the threat of more American sanctions, while gaining the prospect of potentially lucrative bilateral economic cooperation.
Despite a nominal commitment to peace talks, as summer turned to fall, Russia only intensified its frontline offensives and expanded its long-range attacks on Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure, according to information released by Russian and Ukrainian forces.
Russian forces have captured some 350 square miles of Ukrainian territory — roughly the same area as the German capital of Berlin — since Trump and Putin sat down together in Alaska, according to data from the Institute for the Study of War think tank.
Putin has for years said that any peace deal in Ukraine must reflect the “new territorial realities” of Russian occupation of large chunks of the country. As Russian troops edge forward, Putin appears to be trying to entrench those territorial realities.
That new territory is a tiny sliver of the roughly 44,600 square miles — nearly 20% — of Ukraine controlled by Russian forces. But despite the slow rate and reportedly high human cost of Russia’s advance, independent military analysts worry it reflects a growing momentum for Moscow.
A high-profile advance around the destroyed Donetsk city of Pokrovsk and an unexpected local breakthrough on Ukraine southern Zaporizhzhia front have further burnished the Kremlin’s propaganda campaign promoting what they claim as an inevitable Russian victory.
Relentless Russian drone and missile strikes continue to kill civilians and wreak havoc on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, particularly the energy grid. Concentrated strikes on power stations and natural gas infrastructure have precipitated rolling blackouts in many parts of the country — including in Kyiv — as winter bites.
Zelenskyy’s government has also been rocked by a corruption scandal that has seen two cabinet ministers removed from their posts and figures close to the president investigated.
Bondarev said he believes Russia is repeating its strategy of delay and obfuscation. Putin is “playing for time,” he said, and “outsmarting” his Western adversaries.
“Putin says we need to remove the root causes of the war,” Bondarev said. “You cannot remove these root causes of the war just by signing some memorandum. You need to work it through. It takes a lot of experts, meetings, coordination — so it may take months. And at the same time, he will be fighting.”
“With each new tiny victory — every new village occupied, every square kilometer occupied — the Russian position will be more and more robust, less and less flexible,” Bondarev said.
Red lines “People’s expectations for how long a process like this will take are wildly exaggerated,” Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, told ABC News this week.
“I think even in the best case we are talking about months not weeks,” Charap added.
Still, Charap said, the new push by the Trump administration was positive, noting it had jumpstarted negotiations and for the first time produced a framework document that at least included almost all the core issues of the conflict.
“You have to give them credit, they have certainly shaken up the stasis which had set in,” he said. “There are conversations happening that weren’t happening a week ago.”
Ukrainian lawmakers and analysts told ABC News there remains little hope in Ukraine that Putin can be trusted to abide by the terms of any peace deal. That is why Kyiv’s demands for Western security guarantees, NATO membership and more military aid have been so central to the Ukrainian negotiating position.
Still, Yehor Cherniev — a member of the Ukrainian parliament and the chairman of his country’s delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly — told ABC News that the framework established with the U.S. “is a good signal and it’s good progress in our peace negotiations, because before we were stuck.”
But some “red lines” remain, Cherniev said, “as before, about the concession of our territories or of or our sovereignty.” Ukrainian officials have said they want to leave such thorny topics to a meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy at the White House.
“I have doubts that Russia will agree with this,” Cherniev added.
Oleksandr Merezhko, another member of parliament and the chair of its foreign affairs committee, told ABC News he believes “Putin will reject this peace plan and will reiterate his maximalist demands.”
“He is not interested in peace or ceasefire — he is only interested in our surrender,” Merezhko said. “We should insist not on a ‘peace treaty’ but on a ceasefire agreement.”
Zelenskyy has consistently urged more pressure on Russia twinned with more muscular Western military aid for Kyiv. Trump has often threatened a tougher line on Moscow, but — according to Daniel Fried, a former U.S. ambassador to Poland — it is unclear if he is willing to deliver.
“In the end, Trump is going to have to stare down Putin to get his deal in any kind of decent form,” Fried said at an event Tuesday.
But Bondarev said he sees little hope of an imminent change in U.S. strategy, suggesting that any disunity within the administration will only further strengthen Moscow’s hand.
“Western diplomacy has never tried to get the initiative, to first elaborate its own agenda and impose it on Russia,” the former diplomat said. “They only follow what Russia is doing. You can never prevail if you just follow your adversary and let him lead.”
“Trump mentioned that ‘it takes two to tango,'” he added. “But there is someone in every couple who leads and someone who follows.”
Yan Dobronosov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
(LONDON) — Russian drones attacked a thermal power generation facility in the Kyiv region overnight into Monday, Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said, as Moscow continued its long-range cross-border barrages despite U.S. President Donald Trump again expressing his frustration at such strikes.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 142 drones into the country overnight into Monday morning, of which around 100 were Shahed strike drones and the rest decoy craft. Defenders shot down or suppressed 112 drones, the air force said.
Twenty-six drones impacted across seven locations, the air force said, with debris falling in one other location.
“One of the thermal generation facilities in the Kyiv region has come under massive shelling,” Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said in a statement.
“The goal is obvious — to cause even more difficulties for the civilian population of Ukraine, to leave Ukrainian homes, hospitals, kindergartens and schools without electricity and heat,” it added.
The attack prompted reports of blackouts in some parts of Kyiv. “Generation facilities, electricity transmission and distribution systems, gas infrastructure are not military targets,” the ministry said.
“Rescuers and energy workers are currently working to eliminate the consequences of the shelling,” it added. “We are doing everything possible to stabilize the situation as soon as possible.”
Russia has regularly targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure throughout the full-scale invasion of its neighbor, which began in February 2022. In previous years, attacks on energy targets have intensified in the run up to and during winter.
Sunday night’s attack followed Russia’s largest bombardment of the war overnight on Saturday. Moscow launched 810 drones and 13 missiles into the country, Ukraine’s air force said, of which 747 drones and four missiles were shot down. Nine missiles and 54 drones impacted across 33 locations, the air force said.
The attacks killed at least nine people across Ukraine and prompted condemnation from Ukraine’s European allies.
In the U.S., Trump — who returned to the White House in January vowing to end Russia’s invasion in 24 hours — told reporters he was “not happy about the whole situation.”
“It doesn’t affect us because it’s not our soldiers,” Trump said. “But they’re losing — I used to tell you 5,000 — they’re losing 7,000, between Ukraine and Russia, 7,000 soldiers every single week. It’s such a horrible waste of humanity.”
“So, no, I am not thrilled with what’s happening there, I will tell you,” he continued. “I think it’s gonna get settled. So, I settled seven wars. This I would’ve said would’ve been maybe the easiest one to settle of all. But with war, you never know what you’re getting.”
Trump did not answer when asked what the greatest obstacle to a peace deal in Ukraine was, but said European leaders would visit the White House this week for further talks.
“We have some very interesting discussions,” Trump said. “Europe — certain European leaders are coming over to our country on Monday or Tuesday, individually, and I think we’re gonna get that settled. I think we’re gonna get it settled.”
Trump has repeatedly threatened additional sanctions — including secondary sanctions on key foreign customers for Russian energy exports — on Moscow in response to its continued frontline offensives and long-range strikes.
Last month, Trump imposed an additional 25% tariff on all Indian goods related to New Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil and military equipment.
After Saturday night’s strikes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged a more severe U.S. response.
“It has been repeatedly stated in Washington that there will be sanctions for refusal to talk. We must implement everything agreed upon in Paris,” Zelenskyy said, referring to last week’s meeting with European leaders and virtual talks with Trump in the French capital.
