Russian Democracy

[A Black Falcon]

Explanation number three!

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/intern...SS.html?hp

Resurfaced Russian Candidate Offers Account of Lost Days
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

Published: February 13, 2004

OSCOW, Feb. 13 — Ivan P. Rybkin, the Russian presidential candidate who disappeared for five days before resurfacing in Ukraine this week, appeared in London today and offered yet another explanation for his bizarre absence, saying he had been drugged and kidnapped.

None of Mr. Rybkin's remarks could be corroborated, and his new version contradicted statements he made after returning to Moscow late Tuesday and in a rambling radio interview the next day.

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Mr. Rybkin said at a news conference today that he had been lured to Ukraine's capital, Kiev, on the pretense of meeting with Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen separatist leader who is one of Russia's most wanted men.

Mr. Rybkin, who served as a security adviser to Boris N. Yeltsin, was involved in the peace talks that ended the first Chechen war in 1996 and has remained an advocate of talks to end the second war, which began in 1999.

He said that after arriving at an apartment in Kiev, he felt drowsy after having sandwiches and tea and then fell unconscious for what turned out to be four days. When he awoke, he said, two armed men showed him a compromising videotape of himself, which he refused to describe except to say that it was meant to intimidate him into silence.

Mr. Rybkin suggested that his kidnapping was an effort to discredit liberal challengers to President Vladimir V. Putin before the presidential election on March 14.

"I do not know who did it, but I know who have benefited from it," he said, according to the official Itar-Tass news agency.

Mr. Rybkin left Moscow by train on Feb. 5, prompting his wife and campaign aides to report his disappearance to the police, who then began a search. He surfaced on Feb. 10, calling his campaign manager to say he had gone to Kiev to relax.

He said that he would not return to Moscow before the election, but would continue to run from London.

"My absence from Russia will tell the Russian voters and Western governments 100 times more than my presence," he said in a statement before the news conference today. "After what happened in Kiev, I am convinced that this election is a game without rules."