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Russian Presidential Candidate Says He Was Kidnapped (Update3)

Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Russian presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin, who went missing for five days last week, said he was kidnapped and drugged in Kiev by unidentified armed attackers who spoke perfect Russian.

Rybkin, 57, told journalists in London that he will stay out of Russia until presidential elections on March 14. The former secretary of Russia's security council surfaced Tuesday after disappearing from his Moscow apartment five days earlier.

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

Rybkin, who has criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for authoritarianism and the war in Chechnya, is supported by Boris Berezovsky, a billionaire who has obtained political asylum in the U.K. and is wanted in Russia on charges of fraud. Berezovsky denies the charges, which he claims are politically motivated.

Little known outside Russia until reports this week of his disappearance, Rybkin gained front-page headlines in Russian papers when he returned to Moscow on Tuesday. Rybkin told his campaign manager Tuesday that he had spent time in Kiev with friends relaxing, the manager told Bloomberg News at the time.

Abduction

Today, he told journalists at a news conference that he boarded a train voluntarily to Kiev after being told that he could meet former Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov in the city. In Kiev, he was driven to an apartment, drugged and possibly gassed, and then kept at the apartment by unidentified captors, he said.

Last week, Putin linked a bomb blast in the Moscow underground to Maskhadov, whose London-based representative denied any responsibility for the blast, which killed at least 39 people and hospitalized 122.

Rybkin said he was unconscious for four days, and that when he came to he was shown a video of himself ``made by horrible perverts.'' The video was made ``to compromise me,'' he said, refusing to describe its contents.

``I don't know who did it but I know for whose benefit it was done,'' Rybkin told journalists. He was subsequently released and returned to Moscow, he said.

Poll Rating

Putin, whose campaign for the March 14 presidential election officially began yesterday, received a rating of 79 percent in an opinion poll, which was conducted by the Moscow-based All Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion from Jan. 23 to Jan. 26. Rybkin gained less than 1 percent in the poll. The survey was carried out among 1,601 people across Russia and has a margin of error of 3.4 percent.

``I believe that anything said by Mr. Berezovsky and other people close to him should be considered a lie unless proved otherwise,'' Eric Kraus, the chief strategist at Moscow brokerage Sovlink, said after the announcement. Rybkin ``would be the last person anyone would want to kidnap -- have you seen his tiny poll ratings?''

Rybkin, who has two daughters, studied at Volgograd Agricultural Institute and the diplomatic academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry. He was a chairman of the lower house of the Russian parliament from 1994 to 1996 and secretary of the security council from 1996 to 2000.

``Putin's ratings are not portrayed as they really are,'' Rybkin said.

To contact the reporter on this story:

Sam Fleming in London at [email protected].

To contact the editors for this story:

Chris Kirkham at [email protected].

Heather Harris, or [email protected].

Catherine Hickley at [email protected].

Last Updated: February 13, 2004 11:43 EST