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New Cartoon Showing Muhammad Prompts the Closing of a Russian Paper - February 18, 2006 - In a controversy with echoes of the Islamic anger over Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, the authorities in a central Russian city on Friday ordered the closing of a newspaper that published a cartoon showing Muhammad, along with Jesus, Moses and Buddha. The cartoon, published Feb. 9 in the official city newspaper in Volgograd, prompted some criticism and a federal criminal investigation, but no public outrage.

Volgograd's first deputy mayor, Andrei O. Doronin, announced the closing of the newspaper, Gorodskiye Vesti, or City News, "in order not to inflame ethnic hostilities," according to the official Russian Information Agency. ....President Vladimir V. Putin said, "One has to think a hundred times before publishing something, doing something or drawing something." On Friday, the Prosecutor General's Office announced that it had opened a criminal case against the editor of a newspaper in Vologda, north of Moscow, which had reprinted the Danish cartoons on Wednesday.

Most of the criticism against the cartoon in Volgograd came not from Muslim or other religious leaders, but rather from the local branch of United Russia, the pro-Putin political party that dominates governments across the country.

Russian journalists denounced Friday's decision as censorship. "It is a downright disgrace," Igor Yakovenko of the Russian Union of Journalists told the Interfax news agency. "Russia is the only country that has reacted to the caricature scandal in such a manner."