I love a mystery

Well, actually, not all that much.

An innocent abroad or a victim of "dirty tricks?" Judgments varied Wednesday after would-be President Ivan Rybkin returned to Moscow from a five-day mystery absence saying he had been on an impromptu break in Ukraine.

His haggard appearance at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport on Tuesday night, his evasiveness and his strong hints that he had been under some sort of pressure only added to the mystery about his disappearance.

Press commentators said Rybkin, a fierce critic of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, was bound for political oblivion unless he could show he had been the victim of a "dirty tricks" set-up to discredit him and his financial backer, exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky.

"It's likely this story will mark the end of his participation in the (March 14) elections," the business daily Kommersant wrote. "That is unless Mr. Rybkin can convince his colleagues and voters that he was not acting of his own free will."

Rybkin, a former speaker of parliament, appeared Tuesday in neighboring Ukraine to the bafflement of aides and family in Russia who had triggered a police hunt by reporting him missing.

He said he had simply decided to leave the house on the night of February 5, without telling his wife, and travel to Kiev for a quick break, away from the political pressure.

He said he was with "friends" and had been "stunned" on Tuesday to learn of the fuss surrounding him back in Moscow.

That explanation triggered sniggers and innuendo in broadcast media in Russia, where the common explanation "he's gone missing" is a euphemism for a man on a prolonged drinking binge or a romantic escapade.

NTV television compared him to Styopa Likhodeyev, one of the heroes of Mikhail Bulgakov's surrealistic classic "Master and Margarita," who under diabolic black magic is spirited away to Yalta -- also in Ukraine -- and returns later, dazed, to Moscow.  More