Russian Communist Lawmaker Facing Probe Over Elk Killing

A commission of Russian lawmakers on Monday recommended stripping a senior Communist deputy of his immunity as he faces a probe into the illegal killing of an elk

Moscow, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Nov, 2021 ) :A commission of Russian lawmakers on Monday recommended stripping a senior Communist deputy of his immunity as he faces a probe into the illegal killing of an elk.

Critics say the investigation into Moscow Communist Party first secretary Valery Rashkin is politically motivated, after he led protests in the Russian capital following parliamentary elections in September.

Rashkin and other Communists accused the ruling United Russia party of fraud after it won an overwhelming majority in the election.

Monday's recommendation by a commission of the lower house State Duma came ahead of a plenary session on Thursday when lawmakers will debate whether to remove Rashkin's immunity as requested by prosecutors.

Members of parliament are "all equal before the law," the head of the commission, Otari Arshba, was quoted as saying in a statement released by the Duma.

The poaching investigation was launched in October after Rashkin and a friend were found with parts of an elk carcass in the trunk of a car near the Volga city of Saratov.

Rashkin, 66, initially denied any illegal hunting but later admitted he had killed the animal, claiming he had mistaken it for a wild boar.

He proposed paying 80,000 rubles ($1,070/950 Euros) in compensation for the killing, or to buy a cow elk and release it into the woods.

With nearly all vocal Kremlin critics barred from running in the September elections, many Russians in Moscow and elsewhere backed the Communists as a form of protest voting.

The party, the successor to the one that ruled the Soviet Union, came second with about 19 percent of the vote, trailing President Vladimir Putin's United Russia which took nearly 50 percent.

The past year has seen an unprecedented crackdown on critical voices in Russia, with main opposition politician Alexei Navalny imprisoned in February for two-and-a-half years on old embezzlement charges.

His political organisations were banned, while a number of independent media and Kremlin critics were designated "foreign agents".