Moscow prosecutors launch internal investigation over orders issued to universities on reporting anti-Kremlin activity

The Moscow District Attorney’s Office has launched an internal investigation concerning prosecutor Konstantin Prostakov and his orders asking local universities to report on any students or faculty involved in “anti-Russian campaigns,” reports the Russian business newspaper Kommersant. 

On October 14, Prostakov, a prosecutor from the Nikulinskaya Inter-district Attorney’s Office in Moscow, demanded that RANEPA (the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation) provide information on students’ involvement in unauthorized protests and foreign projects, which “pose a threat to the foundations of the constitutional order of the Russian Federation.”

A Kommersant source says that the order was not coordinated with the Moscow Attorney’s Office, but was rather “an initiative exclusively from the Nikulinskaya Attorney’s Office and the prosecutor personally.”

RANEPA’s administration isn’t required to present the D.A. with information about students, the newspaper specifies. According to Kommersant, other universities have not received similar requests.