MOSCOW: Russian lawmakers yesterday accused a fellow deputy of betraying national interests after he delivered a speech in the US criticizing President Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on the opposition.

Dmitry Gudkov, 33, traveled to Washington in early March to give a speech at a forum organized by a pro-democracy group headed by Pavel Khodorkovsky, the son of the jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

In the speech released by Gudkov, he lambasted “repressive methods of Putin and his minions” and called on the United States to help expose corrupt officials. The deputy speaker of the Russian lower house of Parliament, the State Duma, said that representatives of all four Duma factions had lodged a complaint over Gudkov’s speech with the ethics committee. The head of the Duma’s ethics committee Vladimir Pekhtin resigned last month after opposition bloggers accused him of having US-based property worth over $ 2 million.