[They sure can!]
Russian Candidate Offers Account of Lost Days
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
MOSCOW, Feb. 13 — Ivan P. Rybkin, the Russian presidential candidate who disappeared for five days before resurfacing in Ukraine this week, appeared in London today and offered yet another explanation for his bizarre absence, saying he had been drugged and kidnapped.
None of Mr. Rybkin's remarks could be corroborated, and his new version contradicted statements he made after returning to Moscow late Tuesday and in a rambling radio interview the next day.
Mr. Rybkin said at a news conference today that he had been lured to Ukraine's capital, Kiev, on the pretense of meeting with Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen separatist leader who is one of Russia's most wanted men.
Mr. Rybkin, who served as a security adviser to Boris N. Yeltsin, was involved in the peace talks that ended the first Chechen war in 1996 and has remained an advocate of talks to end the second war, which began in 1999.
He said that after arriving at an apartment in Kiev, he felt drowsy after having sandwiches and tea and then fell unconscious for what turned out to be four days. When he awoke, he said, two armed men showed him a compromising videotape of himself, which he refused to describe except to say that it was meant to intimidate him into silence. ...
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/13/international/europe/13CND-RUSS.html>
Carl
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