All Blog Posts from World Watch

Tired of working amid corruption, a 32 year old Russian police officer has made an unthinkable video appeal directly to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. He says he now fears for his life, but thinks this whistle had to be blown.

"Vladimir Vladimirovich, I am appealing directly to you," says Major Alexei Dymovsky in his video, referring to Putin's by his traditional name. "You have been talking about corruption – you have been saying that not only should corruption constitute a crime, you said it should also be unseemly to engage in corrupt practices. But this is not the case in this country."

The words were more likely to come from a human rights activist or an opposition politician. But this rare outpouring of emotion came from within the Russian power structure, from Dymovsky, a cop in the city of Novorossiysk.

"I want you to know how we live – ordinary officers, ordinary policemen – those who solve and untangle (crimes) and detain (criminals), those who do the real work," Dymovsky said in his recorded speech, during which he looked visibly nervous and stumbled at times.

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“It is not like Leningrad under siege of course, but people have already started eating grass,” Svetlana Antropova, a trade union leader in the town of Pikalyovo woefully complained to a Russian newspaper. "They make nettle soup and dandelion salads. What other choice is there?”

The solution was promptly offered by Russia’s Prime Minister. Vladimir Putin arrived on an emergency visit in this company town and blamed the town’s woes on local officials and delinquent private owners of the Pikalyovo industrial enterprises.

“Why did you start running around like cockroaches only on the eve of my arrival here? Why wasn’t there anyone capable of making the right decisions well before that?" Premier Putin asked, sternly eyeing a group of businessmen and officials.

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"America is a beautiful country – very picturesque – but it has been unlucky with its leaders lately," said a man dressed as Ded Moroz (a Russian Santa Claus) interviewed by CBS News in downtown Moscow. "It has been run by the wrong people." Now, many Russians are hoping new American leadership will bring a thaw in relations.

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