“There, behind my back, in the past, remains bribery, abuse of authority, corruption and all that is negative – today there is none of that,” he announced during a meeting with Kostroma city police.

A ministry-administered “reassessment” of Russia’s police officers was carried out across the country on August 1, during which “issues of questionable declarations of income, real estate and financial transactions came to light,” Nurgaliyev explained.

Of the more than 875 thousand officers who underwent the reassessment, about 183 thousand were fired.

According to the minister, “only the best of the best remain in the new structure.”

Worth noting is that Vice Minister of Internal Affairs Sergei Gerasimov admitted on August 2 that there had been incidents of corruption during the reassessment procedures, albeit “minimal” ones.

The new federal law “On the Police,” Which went into effect March 1, renames Russia’s police forces from the “militsiya” to the “politsiya” and tightens control over how they operate. Part of the reforms involves cutting 22% of the force by 2012 down to 1,106,472.

Until now, public anger against the Russian police has manifested itself largely through public protests and online videos. But on May 27, a group dubbed by the Russian media as the “Primorskie Partisans” began a series of physical attacks on police officers. The group, whose name derives from the guerilla Soviet Partisans in World War II, reportedly distributed leaflets prior to the attacks calling for corrupt officials in the Russian Internal Ministry to be removed from their posts. According to an Ekho Moskvy poll, a majority of Russians are hailing the Partisans as “Robin Hoods.”

On Thursday, the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid newspaper published a report, not officially verified, that police have been given an order to catch the Primorskie Partisans by June 12 – the Russia Day national holiday. On that day, says the paper, the group has supposedly promised to stage several attacks in large Russian cities. They also note that police have located several weapons caches that presumably belong to the Partisans, one of which included a sawed-off shotgun, grenades, ammunition, bulletproof armor, and a motor boat.

The group’s alleged manifesto, which seems to only have been posted online in the last few days, is signed by the group’s self-identified leader, 32-year-old Chechen War veteran Roman Muromtsev. It charges that there is a “global, behind-the-scenes” entity that is “creating terror on our land,” and say that the Primorskie Partisans are “not criminals and not murderers,” but “have taken up the battle against evil.”

It also, however, says that it has taken up the battle “against Jewish fascism, as our glorious grandfathers and fathers took it up in 1941 against the German invaders,” and reports indicate that the group has ties to nationalist and far-right organizations.

At the same time, the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General of Russia said on Thursday that Muromtsev was not a member of the Primorskie Partisans. Therefore, whether or not the manifesto actually represents the group’s views is unclear.

The AFP provides a detailed account of the story:

Russia on Thursday captured one of a gang of anti-police youths whose deadly attacks on the security forces in its Far East Region have gripped the public imagination, investigators said.

The authorities have launched a massive manhunt for the gang, accused of killing one police official and wounding three in a series of brutal attacks in the far-flung region bordering China using knives and automatic weapons.

But in a country where the police are deeply unloved, they have still been dubbed by the media as “Robin Hoods”, after the medieval outlaw of English folklore who robbed the rich and gave to the poor.

Over 71% of callers to the Echo of Moscow radio said the attackers were “Robin Hoods” compared to 29% who called them mere bandits, during a phone-in on Wednesday.

“As part of a special operation, police on June 10 detained a member of a criminal gang, suspected of attacking police,” investigators said in a statement.

The gang of at least five men is suspected of three attacks on police, apparently motivated by a grudge against the force.

More than 150 police officials have been deployed in the manhunt in the Far Eastern Primorye region, a local security services source told the RIA Novosti news agency.

Russian television showed helicopters searching the forested region, while police in flak jackets set up road blocks to check cars.

Third attack

In a first attack on May 27, a police official was stabbed to death while on night duty. The attackers then ransacked the rural police station, stealing handcuffs and uniforms.

In the latest attack on Tuesday, the gang fired at two traffic police officials, wounding them. The attackers wore camouflage and wielded automatic weapons, according to Russian media.

The gang is also linked to third attack on a police car on May 29 that left one officer with gun shot wounds to his face.

Several of the gang have military training and one served in Chechnya, sources in the security services were cited by RIA Novosti as saying.

The public support for the gang underlines what critics say is near-daily abuse of office by the police forces, whose officers are regularly accused of violent crime and bribe-taking.

In November, the country’s interior minister even stressed members of the public had the right to use self-defence against abusive police officers.

The father of one of the suspects blamed “the lawlessness of the Russian police” for the attacks, saying his 18-year-old son Roman has been severely beaten by police officers before he fled home.

Suffered

“They are all boys who have suffered at the hands of the police,” Vladimir Savchenko said on Wednesday in a radio interview with the Russian News Service.

He named the police service of the Kirov district.

Media speculated over the reasons for the attacks.

Anonymous letters were sent in April to police, prosecutors, courts and some political parties in the region demanding that top police officials be fired and threatening a “partisan war,” Kommersant reported.

The gang members also appeared to have links to nationalist groups and messages of support for their attacks appeared on far-right web sites. One of the suspects Alexander Sladkikh, 20, is known to be interested in Nazi ideology, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported, citing a local police official.

Two other suspects had been detained by police for beating up foreigners, Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported.

– AFP

According to Dymovsky, the rallies are meant to support five Russians involved in three different criminal suits: two young men and a young woman from Novosibirsk who have been sentenced to 2-5 years in prison for supposedly beating 20 police officers at once, despite their claims that they themselves were the victim; Oleg Ivanov, a regional leader in Omsk who was charged with fraud, violence against a government authority, and abuse of authority after allowing Dymovsky to legally reside in his region; and Krasnodarsky Krai businessman Sergei Kolesnikov, who says that his business has been illegally taken away from him by the local police.

“I want to speak out in defense of real people, not abstract parrots,” said the former officer.

Dymovsky said that iterations of the June 12 rally will be held in Omsk, Novosibirsk, and the Krasnodarsky Krai, and also most likely in the cities of Volgograd, Novorossiysk, Samara, Sochi, St. Petersburg, and Moscow. Where precisely Dymovsky himself plans to be that day, he didn’t say.

“Wherever it’s going to be more difficult, that’s where I’ll go,” he said.

Dymovsky added that he’s currently negotiating with a variety of social and political organizations to help coordinate and support the events. In particular, he said, opposition leader and Solidarity bureau member Garry Kasparov has promised to support the initiative. Solidarity Executive Director Denis Bilunov said that bringing his opposition movement and Dymovsky together was a “positive trend.” The ex-major was a featured speaker at Solidarity’s May Day celebration earlier this month.

The plans for the June 12 rally come a month after Dymovsky’s latest video message on April 12, when the ex-major called for Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to establish order in the country by November 12, 2010, or face an angry mob on Red Square. While Dymovsky’s original video last November gained widespread media coverage, the ex-major said in April that a media blockade had forced him to resort back to the online video format instead of holding a press conference. The April video has been viewed on YouTube more than 100 thousand times in the past month, in addition to the number of people who viewed it on his website.

Aleksei Dymovsky was fired from the Novorossiysk police soon after posting two videos online that detailed corruption he witnessed within his agency. After fleeing to Moscow in response to threats to himself and his family, Dymovsky held a highly-attended press conference and revealed that he had secretly recorded more than 150 hours of audio in support of his allegations. He was arrested in January on trumped-up charges of fraud, which were dropped in April. His messages have spurred dozens of similar videos from other Russian police officers, state prosecutors, and other government workers from all over Russia. Many people who have come forward to help Dymovsky have found themselves persecuted for their actions. Neither President Medvedev nor Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have publically acknowledged Dymovsky’s existence.

Authorities in Chelyabinsk are filing a criminal suit against police lieutenant Vitaly Yuzynchuk for hitting and killing a pedestrian, whose body he proceeded to bury on the spot. Investigators say that late on the night of April 6, Officer Yuzynchuk was driving his Honda when he hit a 38-year-old Chelyabinsk resident. The victim died at the scene, and the officer decided to cover up the crime by burying the dead body.

However, criminal investigators uncovered the body after several days, and were able to identify the vehicle involved in the accident. Upon learning that he had been found out, Yuzynchuk filed a confession and stressed that “the pedestrian had crossed into closely oncoming traffic.”

According to local media, two of Yuzynchuk’s fellow officers were with him in the car at the time of the accident. All three are presumed to have been drunk. It was unclear whether the passengers currently face any charges, and in fact, Yuzynchuk himself is only being charged with negligent homicide by improper use of a vehicle – not for hiding the body. He faces a maximum term of five years in prison.

Yuzynchuk’s colleagues, including those who uncovered the crime, have come out in strong support of their colleague. A statement to Gazeta.ru from one regional police department read: “Once again you want to write filth about police officers; no comment.” Yuzynchuk was characterized positively in his own department. “We can’t say anything bad about him as either a police officer or a person,” said one officer. “Nothing reprehensible was ever noticed before. There were never any problems with him at work or on a personal level; he never caused any concerns.”

As Gazeta.ru points out, this is not the first time a police officer has been caught shirking responsibility from a traffic accident. In the Vladimir region last August, Officer Yevgeny Spitsyn hit a bicyclist from behind while off-duty; he stopped his car and, failing to check if the woman was still alive, dragged her into a nearby ditch. He then covered the body with branches and left the scene. After the body was discovered, Spitsyn played an active role in the criminal investigation, including by questioning witnesses. In another incident last November in Krasnodarsky Krai, officer Sergei Afanasyev, in uniform, drunkenly lost control of his vehicle and rammed a bus stop, injuring a pensioner and her granddaughter. The officer took them to a regional hospital and falsified their medical documents, saying that the injuries were sustained when the two women simultaneously fell into a basement. The grandmother later filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office explaining what had actually happened, and a suit was filed against Afanasyev. His trial has yet to begin.

Dymovsky is notably more heated in this latest video than the original clips he posted online last year – not surprising, considering that those videos resulted in him being promptly fired from the Novorossiysk police department and forced to flee to Moscow, where he was then arrested and charged with laundering money from the police department’s operational budget. Those charges, which Dymovsky and his supporters maintained were ridiculous and obviously politically motivated, were finally dropped earlier this month.

“You know, from the moment that my first video address was released, already five months have passed,” says the ex-major, addressing President Medvedev. “I think that in that time you could have paid some kind of attention.” But indeed, the Russian president has not once publicly acknowledged the existence of either Dymovsky, his videos, or his allegations. And they certainly would have been hard to miss: Dymovsky’s press conference when he first arrived in Moscow was packed beyond capacity, as few sectors of Russian society disagree on the need for drastic reform of the police. But while Medvedev has made several proposals in the past few months to that end, experts question their efficacy and positive results have yet to be seen.

Dymovsky goes on in his video to accuse the president of “jumping around abroad” and ignoring problems in his own country, before launching into a tirade against a swath of high-ranking government officials, including Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, for spending their time fighting over money to buy up Pacific islands and “wiping their feet on the Russian people.” Appealing to Medvedev “as a man,” the ex-major asks Medvedev to bring criminal charges against Putin for a number of national tragedies in which, according to Dymovsky, the prime minister has direct responsibility. Evoking such incidents as the Nord-Ost theater siege in 2002, the Beslan school massacre in 2004, and the Moscow metro bombings just last month, the ex-major insists that “for every drop of blood spilled, someone should be punished.” Russians, he says, want to live in a country that is safe for themselves and their children.

Since Dymovsky posted his first video exposés last November, police officers from all over Russia have come forward with similar videos and accusations of institutionalized corruption throughout the ranks of the Russian police. The wave of videos reflects a recent trend in which ordinary Russian citizens, feeling that their grievances will go unheeded by government institutions, post videos online detailing police abuses of authority. Some of the clips, such as a recent one in which a man details how he was used by traffic police as a human shield in a hunt for armed robbers, have gone viral and sparked outrage in many Russians.

In his closing remarks, Dymovsky gives the president a deadline to rectify such problems or face an angry rally on Red Square. “Nobody will forgive you for what’s happening in Russia today,” says the former officer. “Remember every mother’s teardrop, remember every baby’s teardrop, starting from 1917. The Russian people remember it. So that said, I advise you to establish order by November 12, 2010, or to step down together with your cabinet. How many more facts do you need, how many more videos do you need about the fact that lawlessness is stirring in Russia? That a genocide of the Russian people is being committed?”

If Dymovsky does follow through with his plan to stage a massive demonstration – especially on as high-profile a place as Red Square – he will be faced by the same basic organizational problem faced by Russia’s entire political opposition: according to the Rosbalt newspaper, Dymovsky says that journalists have been prohibited from writing about him altogether. It was this media blockade that forced him to film another internet video instead of holding a press conference, he says.

But Dymovsky is a man who has voluntarily given up his career, risked his own and his families lives, been forced out of his home, been charged with a variety of nonexistent crimes, and been sent without proper clothing in the middle of winter to sit in a criminal investigative detention center for more than two months – and he still isn’t backing down. The resolve in Dymovsky’s voice as he issues his final line to Medvedev is undeniable: “Remember who you are, and who we are.”

Dymovsky’s video in Russian can be viewed by clicking here.

A press release on the website for the Krasnodarsky Krai Investigate Committee said on Sunday that Dymovsky was being released because investigators had finished looking into the allegations of fraud against him.

Dymovsky had been both fired and arrested shortly after posting two videos on YouTube in November addressed to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, detailing corruption in the Novorossiysk police department. His efforts triggered a slew of similar videos from police officers around the country. The official pretext for his arrest was a suspicion that Dymovsky appropriated 24 thousand rubles (about $800) from the Krasnodar police department, and he was placed in a local criminal investigative detention center (SIZO) on January 22. Dymovsky has categorically denied the charges, asserting that he has documents proving his innocence.

Authorities also said in late February that it was necessary to detain Dymovsky because he lacked a job and permanent residence.

“The decision to release Dymovsky from the SIZO is a good sign,” said Lev Ponomarev, prominent rights activist and head of the Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights. “We’re going to see to it that he remains free.”

“It would be good if the persecution of those who helped Dymovsky ended as well,” he added.

According to RIA Novy Region, Dymovsky said on Sunday evening that prison guards in the Krasnodar SIZO had illegaly detained him for five additional hours after he should have been released. “It was probably some small measure of revenge for the SIZO officers,” Dymovsky said.

Well-known culture critic Artemy Troitsky said on late Tuesday that Ekho Moskvy radio, widely considered to be one of the only sources of unfettered journalism left in Russia, prohibited him from playing a song by the popular rap group Noize MC on the program Osoboye Mneniye (“Special Opinion”). The song blames Lukoil Vice President Anatoly Barkov as at fault for a fatal car crash in Moscow last month that left two women dead.

Upon speaking with Ekho Moskvy Deputy Director Sergei Buntman, Troitsky was told that he couldn’t play the song because it didn’t fit the station’s format and “we have never had this before.” He also expressed concern that playing the song could result in accusations of copyright violation, since Osoboye Mneniye is broadcast in America and Israel on RTVi television.

When Troitsky told Buntman that the rapper had actually given him a recording of the song complete with all broadcasting rights, Buntman was silent. When Troitsky added that Osoboye Mneniye was a “rotten program,” Buntman responded in outrage and told Troitsky that he would no longer be allowed to host the show. Having other broadcasting duties at the station, Troitsky says that he doesn’t plan to file any complaints but is concerned at the incident.

The car accident in question occurred on February 25 on Moscow’s Gagarin Square, and left 36-year-old driver Olga Aleksandrina and 72-year-old Vera Sidelnikova dead. Barkov and his driver sustained only minor injuries. Police were quick to lay blame for the accident on Aleksandrina, but witnesses have since come forward claiming that Barkov’s armored Mercedes had been driving on the wrong side of the road to avoid a traffic jam. The resulting scandal has brought attention to Moscow residents’ long-held concerns that elite members of Russian society are given free reign by the police to commit gross traffic violations.

As of the time of publication, a YouTube video Noize MC’s song, “Mercedes S 666” has received more than 224 thousand views.

Troitsky’s blog post can be read in Russian by clicking here.