Missing Putin rival returns home
From Jill Dougherty
CNN Moscow Bureau Chief
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Rybkin speaks to the media on his arrival in Moscow.
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MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- Russian presidential candidate Ivan Rybkin, whose whereabouts was unknown for five days, has returned to Moscow from Kiev, Ukraine.
Wearing a fur hat and tinted glasses, Rybkin arrived in a snowstorm at a Moscow airport on Tuesday, giving reporters no explanation of what he had been doing since he disappeared last Thursday.
Rybkin, the former speaker of Parliament and a national security adviser to former President Boris Yeltsin, did however hint he might have been held against his will.
The presidential candidate and head of the Liberal Russia party went missing from his home Thursday evening and both his wife and campaign staff feared for his life, concerned he might have been killed or kidnapped.
The disappearance caused a political sensation, and the mystery deepened when prosecutors launched a murder probe, and then cancelled it. Russia's Federal Security Service also launched an investigation.
Others, however, believe the disappearance might have been a publicity stunt.
A liberal and strong critic of President Vladimir Putin, Rybkin is running as an independent in the March 14 presidential election -- which Putin is expected to win easily.
Rybkin has poll ratings of barely 1 percent compared to Putin's ratings average of 80 percent.
The first word that the 57-year-old had turned up came from his campaign manager, who told CNN Rybkin had called her on his mobile phone Tuesday afternoon, saying he was puzzled by the "hysteria" back in Moscow.
Rybkin, quoted by Interfax news agency, said he had been "hanging out" with his friends, had turned his mobile phone off and did not watch television. He said he noticed a newspaper story about him Tuesday and called Moscow.
At the Moscow airport, Rybkin appeared very serious, refusing to say precisely what happened to him but hinting he might not have survived the stay in Kiev.
"There's really nothing to say. I'm back as if I went through a difficult round of Chechen negotiations. And I'm very glad I'm back," he told reporters.
"And were there any other possibilities?" one journalist asked.
"I don't know, probably there were," he replied.
Another question: "Did they hold you (in captivity) there?"
"It's very difficult to hold me," Rybkin said, "but I all the same think there are good people in Kiev to whom I am very grateful."
Rybkin abruptly ended the questions with, "No comment. I am very disturbed that my daughter cried on the phone with me. Thank God, I am back in my homeland, Nothing more. That's it."
Rybkin is a supporter of negotiations with Chechen separatists, an idea Putin vehemently rejected just last Friday following a subway bombing blamed on Chechen terrorists.
He is also allied with Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who now lives in London.
Rybkin was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying he could withdraw his candidacy for president.