MOSCOW, January 15 (RAPSI) - A municipal lawmaker from St. Petersburg, Vitaly Milonov, filed a motion with Russian mass media regulator, Roskomnadzor, to brand the Charlie Hebdo weekly as an extremist media outlet, TASS reports on Thursday.

Milonov believes that the controversial French magazine incites faith hatred and its publication obviously leads to the escalation of violence.

“This ban should prevent the launch of a Russian version of the magazine. Ideas and cartoons of this sort will not be supported by the majority of Russians,” the lawmaker said.

The January 14 issue of Charlie Hebdo came out with a caricature of the Prophet Mohammed, published on its cover. The issue was the first to be printed after the tragic events of January 7. Twelve people were killed and 11 injured in the shooting at the magazine’s editorial office. The terrorist attack killed the largest number of people in France in the past 50 years.

On Wednesday, the Russian mass media watchdog conducted an “induction” with the federal and regional media regarding the publication of materials that could incite religious hatred and specifically the publication of faith related cartoons.

The federal agency urged the national media to choose other forms of expressing solidarity with their tragically killed French counterparts instead of building inter-faith tension within Russian society.