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United Russia to keep close watch over probe into Russian flag desecration incident

Bloodhound Gang’s performance at the Kubana-2013 festival in Russia’s southern Krasnodar Territory was cancelled

MOSCOW, August 4 (Itar-Tass) - Those who have any relation to the incident at a concert of the American rock group Bloodhound Gang in Odessa, when its bass guitarist Evil Jared Hasselhoff desecrated the Russian national flag, must be punished and United Russia will have this situation under its control, deputy speaker of the Russian State Duma lower parliament house and leader of the United Russia faction Vladimir Vasilyev told journalists on Sunday.

“Our law enforcement agencies are already probing into this incident,” he said. “And the United Russia, for its part, will keep this subject under its control. It is necessary to check all the circumstances, to establish whether it was a deliberate provocation and whether the concert organizers had anything to do with it. All those responsible for that must be punished.”

“As for legal consequences, both the Russian and the Ukrainian laws provide for criminal liability for desecration of state symbols,” he stressed.

He also said that this act of desecration should be given an ethic reproach, along with legal response. In this respect, he noted that people had assessed this incident quite definitely, which was proved by their comments in the Internet.

“Society, which is made of not only citizens of Russia and Ukraine, but of other states as well, is utterly indignant,” he said. “Any civilized person understands that such things are inadmissible.” He added that as far as he knew ordinary Americans were likewise serious abou their state symbols.

In this context, he recalled the pronouncements by U.S. Senator John McCain, who said that Russia had sought to humiliate the United States by granting temporary asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden. “I wonder what would be say about what the American musicians did,” he noted.

Bloodhound Gang’s performance at the Kubana-2013 festival in Russia’s southern Krasnodar Territory was cancelled. The musicians are facing criminal prosecution. But the Krasnodar Territory’s department of the Russian Investigations Committee has received no relevant materials from the prosecution agencies so far.

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