Putin Rival Tells of Being Drugged, Filmed

A Russian presidential candidate who disappeared for several days said Friday that he was drugged and made the subject of a compromising video while being held by unknown captors in Ukraine.

Liberal candidate Ivan Rybkin said he would pursue his campaign from London because of safety concerns.

Rybkin initially said he had taken a break in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, when he surfaced there this week after he had been reported missing.

But he told a news conference Friday in London that he had been lured to Kiev on the pretext of meeting Chechen separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov for peace talks.

Rybkin has promised an end to the Chechen hostilities within six months and a return of the breakaway republic to the Russian Federation if he is elected March 14 to replace President Vladimir V. Putin. The incumbent is expected to easily beat all the other candidates, including Rybkin.

Rybkin told reporters that he felt sleepy after being given sandwiches and tea at a Kiev apartment where he had been taken for the proposed meeting Feb. 6.

He said he could remember nothing more until he regained consciousness in a different apartment, where two armed men told him that it was Tuesday -- four days later -- and he was still in Kiev.

The men showed him newspapers and video reports of his disappearance -- as well as a compromising videotape that appeared to have been made during his stay. He would not say what occurred in the video.

“I don’t know who kidnapped me, but I know for whose benefit it was done,” he said. “I believe it was mainly done for the benefit of those who seek to compromise or humiliate the opposition, which is under difficult pressure from the government.”

Rybkin, who served in the 1990s as parliament speaker and secretary of Russia’s Security Council, is running in the election with the backing of self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, a bitter foe of Putin.

Berezovsky, who last year received political asylum in Britain, was present at Friday’s news conference but did not speak.