"I read that the Russians feel that the cartoon is blasphemous," said Rochefort, a former professor of journalism at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris.
"My only comment is that Charlie has just resumed being Charlie — an equal opportunity attacker on anything others consider sacred."
On Thursday Charlie Hebdo published two cartoons which appeared to mock the disaster. In one cartoon, an Islamic State terrorist is depicted holding his head as parts of an airliner fall from the sky, with the caption "IS: Russian aviation intensifies its bombing."
Allegedly these are new #CharlieHebdo cartoons mocking a tragedy as a result of which 224 people died. pic.twitter.com/VauuozEDrt
— Yury Barmin (@yurybarmin) November 6, 2015
The second shows a skull wearing sunglasses, with the crashed airliner in the background. The caption reads, "The dangers of flying Russian low-cost. I should have taken Air Cocaine," a reference to two French pilots alleged to have tried to smuggle 680 kg of cocaine out of the Dominican Republic.
The cartoons incited anger in Russia, where people are grieving the 217 passengers and seven crew members who died in the disaster on October 31, the worst disaster in Russian and Soviet aviation history. All those who were on board the Kogalymavia passenger jet flying from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg lost their lives when the plane crashed over the Sinai Peninsula.
Articulating public anger about the cartoons, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswomen Maria Zakharova asked on her Facebook page, "Is anyone still Charlie?"
"We didn't have much time, but I and my colleagues tried to find caricatures of the Charlie Hebdo employees who were shot by terrorists, but we couldn't," said Peskov.
"The sharp reaction by the state parliament is a testament to our absolute emotional and fundamental rejection of such a joke. That is really unacceptable for us."
