WORLD BRIEFING
A junior Russian policeman was fired after making a YouTube appeal to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in which he accused senior officers of corruption, a claim dismissed by authorities as false, news agencies reported.
The policeman from the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk last week posted a seven-minute clip that accused senior officers of forcing him to work weekends and solve imaginary crimes, as well as blocking him from claiming compensation for an injury.
“I want to show you from the inside the life of cops across Russia . . . the ignorance, the boorishness, the recklessness, where officers die because of their dimwitted bosses,” Alexei Dymovsky said in the video, posted on YouTube.
After almost 200,000 viewings, the Interior Ministry promised an inquiry, but two hours later, news agencies quoted a ministry spokesman as saying an inquiry had been completed and that the officer had been fired “for libel and actions that tarnish the honor” of the police.
In an interview with a radio station, Dymovsky said he believed his car had been followed and that he would send his wife and daughter to Moscow for safety reasons.
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