A month ago we reported on the announcement of criminal charges against Russian Police Major Alexei Dymovsky as a result of his YouTube appeal to Vladimir Putin to help him stop corruption in the ranks.

Now, Dymovsky has been arrested.  He faces up to ten years in prison and a period of pretrial incarceration, next to criminals he may have personally jailed, for an indefinite period without bail while he awaits trial.  He’s already been fired for speaking out against the abuse of his profession.

In a bizarre report on the arrest, the Kremlin’s English-language propaganda network Russia Today stated that the court backtracked on allowing Dymovsky to remain free pending trial upon his promise not to leave the country because of misconduct on Dymovsky’s part.  It claimed:   ”It is reported that Dymovsky allegedly threatened a law enforcement officer who is investigating the criminal case against him.”

Even by the appalling standards of Russia Today, this is shoddy pseudo-journalism.  Not only does RT give no source whatsoever for the “report” it is repeating, when it then quotes the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office there is not one single word about misconduct by Dymovsky being the basis for his incarceration.  The report from the Kremlin’s own newswire service, RIA Novosti, makes no reference to misconduct.  The willingness of RT to publish unsourced libelous statements about a public critic of the Kremlin harkens back to the worst days of Soviet “journalism.”

Remembering the brutal killing of attorney Sergei Magnitsky while the Kremlin’s dock, one cannot but shudder at these developments.  When Magnitsky was first discovered to have perished, of course, the Kremlin also attempted to blame him for his own circumstances, and the smear against Dymovsky is entirely typical of the “justice system” in the USSR.  To watch RT play fast and loose with the basic facts and standards of journalism that govern other English-language publications is to see the true horror of the Putin regime laid bare, and in this way at least the existence of RT serves a useful purpose. It is a daily reminder that we should “question more” the lies that it and its Kremlin overlords try to tell us, about Officer Dymovsky and every other aspect of Russian life today.