With Russia’s next presidential election less than a year away, political analysts are obsessing over every last statement by members of the ruling tandem. With eleven long months of intrigue yet ahead, the Communist Party clearly grasped the appeal of some electoral comic relief – as their more than 1.6 million YouTube views since March 30 attest.

On Tuesday, another user posted an English-subtitled version of the video:

The news surfaced after the mother of an ailing child tried to find out what happened to the funds.

“A very strange situation has arisen,” she wrote in an open letter. “Before and after the concert there was talk about handing over funds [to hospitals], and now it appears that no one had promised anything.”

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told the Interfax news agency that the prime minister had been informed about the allegations.

“We’re aware of the Internet user’s appeal in which she asks completely fair questions about what happened to the money raised at the charity event in which Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took part,” he said.

Peskov said that Putin was only a guest at the concert and not involved with the fund-raising. He declined to say who was responsible for handling the money but said the government is satisfied the “work is being carried out.”

A spokeswoman for the Federation Foundation, which held the event, told the website Newsru.com that it was involved only in organizing the concert and had nothing to do with collecting or distributing the donated money.

Russian media reported that former musician Vladimir Kiselyov, believed to have been responsible for spearheading the event, warned reporters “not to look for anyone.”

“No one will tell you anything,” he said. “The Federation Foundation is doing its work and you should do yours.”

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, who Kasparov criticizes in his speech for lacking the want or will to dismiss the prime minister and pave the way for a democratic state, was ironically also in Oslo at the time for an official visit to Norway and stayed in the same hotel as the rights advocates. The president, notes Kasparov, would have done well to attend the forum.

Other videos from the forum can be viewed by clicking here. As of this writing, a speech by renowned Chechen lawyer and rights activist Lidia Yusupova has not yet been posted, but is apparently forthcoming.

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.

Update 4/6/10: The Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, turned down the State Duma’s bill during it’s Tuesday session. Mihkail Kapura, deputy chairman of the judicial committee, cited a lack of viability to implement such restrictions and the danger of bringing about the destruction of free speech.

A new law passed on Monday by the Russian State Duma will ban the media from reproducing any statements whatsoever issued by anyone deemed to be a terrorist, ITAR-TASS reports.

The bill was written by Robert Shlegel, a member of the leading United Russia party and former press secretary for the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi. It will amend current legislation governing the media to include a ban on “the distribution of any material from persons wanted for or convicted of participating in terrorist activities.”

Shlegel said that the March 29 suicide bombings on the Moscow metro, which killed 40 people and injured more than 100, was the impetus for the bill. He said that he opposes giving a spotlight in the media to Doku Umarov, the Chechen rebel leader who has claimed responsibility for the attacks. He also criticized Google for allowing its YouTube video service to host a recording of Umarov’s post-March 29 statement.

“News about militants should consist only of reports about their destruction,” Shlegel concluded.

Amidst the heightened criticism at the Russian government’s failure to address terrorism originating in the country’s volatile North Caucasus region, some Kremlin supporters have accused the press of being terrorist collaborators. In particular, State Duma Speaker and United Russia member Boris Gryzlov singled out columnist Aleksandr Minkin of the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper as collaborating with the terrorists responsible for the March 29 attacks. Minkin has demanded an apology from Gryzlov and threatened to sue him for slander. Gryzlov has threatened a counter suit. Additionally, United Russia member Andrei Isayev has threatened that party members might sue Minkin for being a terrorist collaborator.

Director Oleg Panfilov of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations said that the new law will turn Russia into a country like North Korea and was another example of Shlegel’s “routine stupidity.” “It immediately raises the question,” he said, “Who do we label as terrorists? Those convicted by the court, or those that the bureaucrats consider to be terrorists?”

Secretary Mikhail Fedotov of the Russian Union of Journalists explained that nothing good could result from Russian society being deprived of information about the positions and confessions of alleged terrorists. “Society should know the face of its villains and understand what kind of evil it is being confronted with,” he stressed.

Even without the new law, the Russian media already faces complications with the authorities’ interpretation of current media legislation. Reports surfaced late Monday that the federal communications supervisory agency Roskomnadzor has accused the online edition of the Argumenty Nedeli newspaper of extremism for posting a video of Umarov’s statement. According to the agency, posting the video violates a law prohibiting the media from being used for extremist activity. The law, however, is criticized by oppositionists and human rights groups as being so vague as to allow the government to define extremism however they’d like, and has resulted in crackdowns on a wide variety of groups and individuals critical of the Kremlin.

The news broke Tuesday morning when the Russian media picked up on a YouTube video posted by Moscow resident Stanislav Sutyagin, who detailed what happened in the incident.

“On March 5, an acquaintance and I were driving in a Mercedes on the MKAD,” says Sutyagin. “Before reaching Yaroslavskoye Highway, we saw several highway patrol vehicles that were stopping everybody. At the moment I was in the leftmost lane, and when we were signaled to stop.”

“They asked me to turn the car a bit sideways, and naturally we did so,” Sutyagin goes on. “Giving no further explanation, the police parked their cars behind ours, and after literally a few minutes, a silver Audi flew by and grazed my car as well as the black Volga parked next to me. After that, the police got into their cars and continued the pursuit.”

Sutyagin then explains that an officer directed him to a police outpost, where he was told that there had been a special operation to detain a number of armed and wanted criminals. Sutyagin and the other drivers, he was told, had been used as human shields in an attempt to stop their car. “I have a question for the traffic police,” said Sutyagin in his video. “What if the car had been hit differently? Either I or my acquaintance could have died, or somebody else,” he says. “And what if the criminals stopped – they easily could have begun shooting. Are our lives really worth nothing in our Russian state?”

One of the most outrageous aspects of the incident, says Sutyagin, was that a car carrying a pregnant woman about to give birth was among those used for the barricade. The car sustained light damage in the incident.

Sutyagin said that the police refused to offer compensation for damage to his car. “The most interesting thing was that they told us directly: ‘Guys, you’re not going to get any compensation – in the end, they didn’t catch the car, it got away. And we asked you to stop – so what?'”

Noting that car repairs are far more expensive than the fine for failing to stop for police, and that a human life has no price at all, Sutyagin concluded that he plans to risk the fine in future situations.

Maksim Galushko, a spokesperson for the Moscow traffic police, told Gazeta.ru that the agency had learned about the incident through the media. “We’re dealing with it,” he said. No official confirmation or denial that the highway patrol had created a human shield to stop armed criminals had been issued as of Tuesday afternoon.

Journalists were also unable to reach the highway patrol division noted by Sutyagin in his video as responsible for the incident.

Sergei Kanayev, head of the Moscow division of the Russian Federation of Automobile Owners, said that police had created a human shield in a similar incident a year and a half ago in Moscow. “Luckily, the drivers refused to stop across the road, despite threats that they were forfeiting their rights,” he said.

“I recommended at the time that those involved in the incident should complaint to the prosecutor’s office, warning that “it will happen again,'” Kanayev said. “They decided not to complain – and it happened again.”

The allegations are just the latest in a long-running slew of unsavory incidents involving the Russian police. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev says that reform of the country’s notoriously corrupt law enforcement agencies is a top priority, firing dozens of police officials in the past couple of months and calling for higher wages. One thousand activists rallying for police reform in Moscow on Saturday were less than thrilled with the president’s efforts, criticizing the government for its persecution of whistleblowing cops that have attempted to expose systemic corruption.

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