Russian Politician Missing for 3 Days

Russian police have launched a search for presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin, a former national security chief turned Kremlin critic, who disappeared from his home late Thursday, police and Rybkin’s wife said Sunday.

The disappearance immediately prompted speculation over the possibility of a political kidnapping or murder, but it also appeared possible that he had been picked up by security forces and would soon be released.

An outspoken critic of President Vladimir V. Putin’s hard-line policy in war-torn Chechnya, Rybkin is far behind the incumbent in the polls for next month’s election. His wife, Albina Rybkina, said in a telephone interview that her husband had disappeared from their home sometime between 8 p.m. Thursday, when his bodyguard dropped him off, and 11 p.m., when she arrived.

“I think that something bad could have happened to him because he is not the greatest fan of the current regime in Russia,” Rybkina said. “And I think it must be the authorities taking revenge on him now.

“This entire situation revives the images of the notorious Stalin purges in the 1930s. And now, I am afraid, these times are coming back.”

She said she had been told by a duty officer at Russia’s Security Council that her husband would reappear on Monday, but that she didn’t trust that information. “I think they told me this just to calm me down and comfort me,” she said.

Although police and the Federal Security Service were searching for Rybkin, authorities had no reason to think he had been abducted, Moscow police spokesman Kirill Mazuin told the Russian news agency Itar-Tass. Mazuin said that no ransom demands had been made.

Rybkin’s key backer, self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, one of Putin’s fiercest critics, said in a telephone interview from Britain that the assurance from the Security Council official was the most important evidence in tracking Rybkin’s disappearance.

Berezovsky said he did not want to speculate on what may have happened because “Ivan Rybkin is in a danger zone now, and the last thing I want is to hurt him or make his lot tougher with my words. And words that I say may prompt these people to do anything.”

Analysts said that if Rybkin did not quickly reappear and the case remained unsolved, suspicion might fall not only on authorities but also on Putin’s opponents, who could benefit from the depiction of Russia as sliding into repression.

“Those who are interested in finding the truth about what happened to Ivan Rybkin will be pointing fingers in both directions -- some will accuse the authorities, others will be blaming Berezovsky,” said Liliya Shevtsova, an analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center. “But it will not change the situation at all -- there will be no political consequences.”

Political murders, most of them unsolved, have been fairly frequent in Russia over the last decade. Since 1994, 10 members of parliament have been killed.

A Moscow court is to open hearings today in the 2003 slaying of Sergei Yushenkov, co-leader of a faction of the Liberal Russia party that split with Berezovsky in 2002, Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency reported. One defendant is Mikhail Kodanyov, a leader of the party’s pro-Berezovsky faction. Rybkin became head of that faction in July, after Kodanyov’s arrest. It was unknown whether Rybkin was to testify at the trial.

In the March 14 election, no candidate appears to have a chance of defeating Putin, but the lopsided contest can still provide a platform for his opponents.

“It should not be completely ruled out that there are some influential forces in Russia which feel very uncomfortable about having to listen to the voice of Ivan Rybkin, who is a marginal candidate really, but who asks rather unpleasant questions,” Shevtsova said.

Sunday was the deadline for the Central Election Commission to decide which candidates qualified for the ballot, and it approved seven names. Those candidates, and their approximate support level as shown in recent public opinion polls, are: Putin, 75%; leftist economist Sergei Glazyev, 3%; Communist Nikolai Kharitonov, 2%; and Irina Khakamada, a pro-business and pro-democracy leader, 1.4%. Pulling 1% or less support are Rybkin, who was national security chief under former President Boris N. Yeltsin; Oleg Malyshkin, nominee of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party; and Sergei Mironov, chairman of the upper house of parliament.

Putin’s overwhelming popularity means that for the opposition, the election is less about trying to defeat him than it is about trying to embarrass him, limit his power or position themselves for the future.

For Putin and his backers, the goal is to emerge in the best possible position, domestically and internationally. For that, analysts say, Putin needs a strong victory in a race that is perceived as reasonably democratic. The kidnapping or murder of an opponent could hurt him far more than it would help.

“Rybkin’s disappearance can hardly benefit any political forces in Russia -- neither the authorities, nor those who wage a war against these authorities,” Shevtsova said. “The secret services will not benefit from this, for lots of fingers will be pointed at them. In the long run, the disappearance will not benefit Berezovsky either. Many people will suspect him of having set Ivan Rybkin up like this in order to make the latter a victim and prove what a bad person Putin is.”

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Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.