MOSCOW, March 12. /TASS/. A senior lawmaker from the lower house of Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, said Thursday that the European Parliament’s resolution on the recent murder of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov is an attempt to pressure Russia.
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) on Thursday endorsed by a majority of votes a resolution in which they called on Russia’s authorities to conduct an independent international investigation into the murder of Nemtsov.
The European Parliament "calls on the Russian authorities to do their utmost to bring the killers to justice; urges that the investigation be transparent, thorough and determined," the resolution in particular said.
"I think the European Parliament’s resolution demanding an independent international investigation of the murder of Boris Nemtsov is a regular attempt to pressure Russia," first deputy head of the ruling United Russia party’s faction in the State Duma Frants Klintsevich told journalists Thursday.
Klintsevich said "solution of the crime is the last thing the European deputies are interested in."
- Nemtsov murder suspect Zaur Dadayev appeals arrest
- Investigators after a newspaper reporter who visited Nemtsov murder suspects in custody
- Russian human rights activist interrogated as a witness in the case of Nemtsov’s murder
- Three suspects in Nemtsov murder case deny guilt — Public Monitoring Commission
- Main suspect in Nemtsov murder left Russian interior troops service in 2015
- Chechen leader says he knows Nemtsov murder suspect as "true patriot of Russia"
In turn, first deputy chairman of the State Duma international affairs committee, Leonid Kalashnikov, said there should be no reaction to the European Parliament’s resolution.
"We should not react to that or say anything to find an excuse," Kalashnikov told TASS Thursday.
He said the European Parliament should finally understand that Russia is not under its jurisdiction , and such resolutions are interference in the course of the investigation.
"We need to state once clearly that we have people to investigate [the case], we are a sovereign country. We live by our laws," Kalashnikov said.
"We shouldn’t try to find excuses before European parliamentarians… They’d better go investigate the murder of [John] Kennedy," he said.
Russian opposition and state figure, deputy of a regional legislature, the Yaroslavl region duma, Boris Nemtsov, was shot dead on downtown Moscow’s Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge overnight to February 28 from a handgun.
Nemtsov was a co-chair of the RPR-Parnas party. He had held a number of government positions in the 1990s. Russia’s Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case into the killing under articles 105 and 222 of the Russian Criminal Code. Investigators do not rule out the murder was a contract killing.
Nemtsov was buried at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery in Moscow on March 3.
The key witness of the crime, Ukrainian national Anna Duritskaya, who was with Nemtsov at the moment of his killing, left for Ukraine after required investigative activities. She plans to cooperate with investigators.