Russian police officer sacked after exposing corruption on home videoblog

Major calls on premier Vladimir Putin to clean up police after recounting tales of low pay, long hours and trumped up charges

?SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'">         Luke Harding Moscow

?SPAN style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'">         http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/09/russia-police-videoblog

A Russian police officer has been sacked after exposing corruption among his senior colleagues in an audacious homemade video blog posted on YouTube.

In a case that has prompted public debate inside the country about its scandal-prone police force, Major Alexei Dymovsky has become Russia's latest media sensation, with hundreds of thousands of people logging on to watch his videos.

Tired of miserable pay, long hours and requests to solve fictitious crimes, Dymovsky decided to take matters into his own hands. In two personal videoblogs recorded while sitting on his sofa at home, Dymovsky appealed directly to Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, urging him to improve conditions for Russia's demoralised police.

"Vladimir Vladimirovich! Let's together investigate the state of the police force across Russia! I'm not afraid of my own death," Dymovsky said into the camera, occasionally stumbling over his words, and dressed in his dark blue, interior ministry uniform.

More than 400,000 people have visited Youtube and Dymovsky's own website to watch his emotional video appeal. In it, Dymovsky, an officer with the narcotics squad in the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, describes how local police bosses forced him to work unpaid on Saturdays and Sundays ?a gruelling timetable that, he said, prompted two former wives to walk out on him. He and his colleagues were paid 14,000 roubles (?00) a month, he complained, despite the demanding nature of their jobs.

Dymovsky also revealed how his boss told him to arrest someone whom he knew was innocent. Dymovsky agreed. In return he got promotion. "I'm sick and tired of it all. I want to resign," he said, dubbing his senior officers "ignorant, reckless, boorish and dim-witted".

Dymovsky's disclosures have turned him into an overnight celebrity. They also appear to have cost him his job: on Sunday interior ministry officials announced he had been fired. His crime was slandering his force, they said.

Among ordinary Russians, however, his remarks have found enormous resonance. Giving bribes to traffic police and venal officers is a part of daily life in Russia, with opinion poll surveys confirming the low public regard in which the profession is held.

Thousands of bloggers have posted comments supporting Dymovsky on YouTube; over the weekend Echo Moskvy, Russia's liberal radio station, held a phone-in in which serving police offices, speaking anonymously, corroborated Dymovsky's depressing claims.

Dymovsky's former colleagues, meanwhile, have responded with fury. "We disagree with our colleague, whom we can hardly call a colleague, since the major hasn't showed up to work since August," Novorossiisk police said in a statement, reported by the Moscow Times.

Since posting his blogs on the internet on Friday, Dymovsky says he has had to hire a bodyguard. He has also complained that unknown people - almost certainly from Russia's intelligence agencies - have been tailing his car, forcing him to dispatch his pregnant wife to the relative safety of Moscow.His revelations are the latest in a series of embarrassing scandals to batter Russia's warily regarded police. Their timing could hardly be worse, ahead of tomorrow's Dyen militizia - or national police day, a holiday supposed to celebrate police employees and their labour.