Moscow City Duma to elaborate a method for combating cult expansion in Russia’s capital

Moscow, Russia - A special session dealing with the issue of cult expansion in Russia’s capital will be held in the Moscow City Duma in the middle of March.

‘Various cults make real danger today, especially in the city of Moscow, and particularly among the youth,’ the chairwomen of the Moscow Duma’s commission for education, social policy and employment Tatiana Potyayeva said in her interview by the Moskovskaya Pravda daily on Wednesday.

According to Potyayeva, in some Moscow districts cults were allowed to lease buildings, which could have been used for other purposes, chiefly for public sports.

For instance, a few days ago citizens of the Ostankinsky district told Potyayeva that a large sport complex, owned by a factory, had been sold to a Brazilian cultist group.

‘Meanwhile the Slavic Humanitarian University and other educational foundations are located nearby, offering the cultists a possibility to recruit new adherents,’ she said.

The Moscow Duma members are anxious that the totalitarian cults may penetrate educational system rather easy and ‘that this process often ignores or directly violates the existing laws,’ she added.

‘We need to identify the most common crimes of this sort and possible ways of how they are committed, and to take efficient measures to suppress them. I think we will discuss this issue at the next sitting,’ Potyayeva said.