Missing candidate gives few answers in interview

MOSCOW -- A Russian presidential candidate who disappeared for five days gave a rambling account of his absence Wednesday, suggesting in a radio interview that he spent part of it hiding out in Ukraine from shadowy operatives tailing him for two years.

But Ivan Rybkin also lashed out at authorities for not informing Russians about his whereabouts, saying they easily could have tracked his movements across the Ukraine's border through a control computer.

"I was shocked by what happened with me," Rybkin, 57, said of the national furor over his disappearance during an hourlong interview with Echo of Moscow radio.

Rybkin, a critic of President Vladimir Putin, also announced he was taking "a weeklong time-out" to decide whether to scrap his long-shot candidacy in the March 14 election, which Putin is expected to win. He said he will not participate in the televised debates and he wants to avoid "any kind of dispute."

Rybkin, who headed Russia's Security Council under former President Boris Yeltsin, disappeared last Thursday after being dropped off outside his Moscow home, according to his wife and campaign staffers.

He resurfaced Tuesday in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, and flew back to Moscow amid a torrent of questions about what happened to him. Initially, Rybkin suggested his absence was a much-needed rest from the swirl of activity around his campaign.

But after arriving back in Moscow, he hinted vaguely at a more sinister reason. During Wednesday's interview, Rybkin described the pressure, stress and constant attention focused on him, adding without explanation that he had been shadowed for two years.

"I have had enough of it," he said repeatedly.

He suggested that was one of the reasons he went to Kiev without telling his wife or campaign staff. While in the Ukrainian capital, Rybkin met with friends, business associates and Ukrainian opposition forces, he said.

When he discovered the furor around his absence, Rybkin said he felt "very uncomfortable" and changed his plans, deciding not to return immediately to Russia.

"I felt a threat to my personal security," he said.

When asked if he was the victim of violence or an assassination attempt, he answered, "I don't want to qualify it."

The Moscow police, however, said Rybkin informed them he was not a crime victim, and on Wednesday they formally closed their investigation into his disappearance.

In the radio interview, Rybkin hinted at intrigues carried out by the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB. He repeatedly said that he knows how those agencies work.

Putin was a KGB agent and FSB director before becoming Russian president in March 2000.

Rybkin also chastised the FSB for not reporting his whereabouts to the public. He said he presented his passport at the Ukrainian border, as required, and dealt with numerous customs and other officials.

"They wished me a good trip, they bade me farewell," he said.

Finding him, he said, would have been as easy for authorities as "clicking on a mouse" on a computer to trace his movement across the border.

"They would have immediately found me ... but instead a very complicated situation arose," he said.

Political analysts remained at a loss to fully explain Rybkin's behavior. His disappearance came the same week he launched a fierce attack on Putin, and two days before he was formally registered as a presidential candidate.

"You don't need political analysts to discuss this, you need a psychologist," Igor Bunin, general director for the Center for Political Technologies, told Echo of Moscow.

He added that it seemed to him that Rybkin "didn't know what to say" during the radio interview.

Some suggested that Rybkin buckled under the pressure of being thrust into the limelight as an anti-Kremlin candidate by his party's sponsor, exiled tycoon and Putin critic Boris Berezovsky.

Berezovsky told Echo of Moscow on Tuesday that he spoke to Rybkin after he turned up and Rybkin said he was tired and went to Ukraine to visit friends.