I wonder why Kerry was talking about himself in third person if it was he himself who sent the e-mail.
Is that how the DUs do it?
Wed Feb 11,12:46 PM ET By Richard Balmforth
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The strange tale of Ivan Rybkin grew even murkier Wednesday when the would-be Russian president said he had felt under threat from special service agents during his five-day mystery absence in Ukraine.
But, in an often incoherent account to a radio station, the former parliament speaker failed to answer other questions over his disappearance, something that may damage his credibility as a presidential challenger.
Asked whether he would drop out of the race for the Kremlin top job, he said: "I am thinking this over."
Rybkin, 57, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, returned to Moscow Tuesday night, looking haggard and disoriented, ending a police manhunt sparked by his sudden disappearance from home on Feb. 5.
Speaking to Ekho Moskvy, Rybkin stuck to his original story that he had simply decided to go to the neighboring state -- without telling his wife or aides -- to take a break from political pressures.
While acknowledging for the first time that he had learned of the alarm back in Moscow as early as the weekend, he blamed Russia's FSB state security for not putting people's minds at rest when they knew where he was.
"I can say with 100-percent certainty that all this happened with the knowledge of the special services of Russia. They declared across the country that I was being sought and that they could not find me. It was a sort of game," he said.
He said he had initially met Ukrainian politicians and businessmen. But after learning of the alarm in Moscow he grew fearful that people around him were intending to keep him in Ukraine beyond the Mar. 14 election.
'DIRTY TRICKS'?
"I felt a real threat to my personal security," he said, but declined to elaborate on this.
His words did not appear to substantiate speculation that he had been the victim of a "dirty tricks" to discredit him and his backer, exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky.
Rybkin has accused Putin of crushing independent media and mismanaging the drive against Chechen separatists -- an issue in which he has expertise as a former negotiator.
Like the six other contenders, he is given no chance of stopping the popular Putin from winning a second Kremlin term. But his disappearance has all but destroyed his chances of running an effective campaign.
He gave no explanation of why he did not telephone home during the weekend to reassure his family.
Berezovsky, Rybkin's main financial backer, said Tuesday that Rybkin's political career was over.
Putin's allies accused Rybkin of staging his disappearance to win a sympathy vote for a doomed campaign.
Sergei Mironov, one of the six presidential candidates who says he is standing to support Putin, accused Rybkin of turning the campaign into a "circus."
"It is clear the voter will be the judge of Rybkin," Mironov, speaker of the parliament upper house, said.
Another candidate, liberal Irina Khakamada, said that if it was shown Rybkin had gone off only on impulse "he is not fit to be a politician and should quit the race." If coerced, she said, he should seek asylum in London and tell all.
Rybkin said he had decided to take off on a trip to Ukraine to get away from campaign pressures that included being tailed everywhere by two men and searches of his campaign offices.