Putin Foe's Murder Probe Halted

Russian prosecutors on Monday launched and then quickly ended a murder investigation following the disappearance of a longtime critic and election challenger of President Vladimir Putin.

The family and staff of Ivan Rybkin filed a missing persons report on Sunday, saying he hasn't been heard from for three days.

Rybkin — one of only two liberals on the March 14 ballot and a harsh critic of Putin — hasn't been heard from since Thursday night and has not contacted his wife, close relatives or his campaign staff, campaign member Alexander Tukayev told The Associated Press.

His staff and wife submitted the request for a search to the Interior Ministry on Sunday morning, Tukayev said. Under Russian law, a missing persons report can be filed after three days without contact.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that an hour after prosecutors announced the murder inquiry on Monday, Russia's prosecutor general cancelled it "due to insufficient evidence."

Rybkin, who is running as an independent, had his candidacy approved by election officials on Saturday.

A national security council chief under President Boris Yeltsin, Rybkin has been supported by Boris Berezovsky, a billionaire who was a powerful Kremlin insider in the Yeltsin years but who fell out with Putin and was granted asylum in the United Kingdom.

Berezovsky is one of several wealthy Russian businessmen known as "oligarchs" — men who made vast fortunes during the period when state-controlled Soviet industries were privatized.

Amid public resentment of the oligarchs' wealth, Putin has targeted some of them for alleged corruption. But critics note that Putin's campaign has also targeted magnates who control some of Russia's independent media, raising concerns about freedom of the press.

Rybkin last week unofficially launched his campaign with a full-page open letter in the newspaper Kommersant accusing Putin of being Russia's most powerful oligarch and of ruling by fear.

Also Sunday, election officials registered the final two presidential hopefuls. The registrations bring to seven the number of contenders in a race that is widely considered a one-man show due to Putin's overwhelming popularity.

Irina Khakamada, the leading liberal candidate, and nationalist Sergei Glazyev had their candidacies approved after election officials reviewed a sampling of the two million signatures they were required to submit as independent candidates.

Khakamada has sharply criticized Putin for presiding over a society built on lies and fear. She also accused authorities of covering up the truth about terrorist acts and denounced Putin's handling of the seizure of a Moscow theater by Chechen rebels in 2002.

But neither candidate is expected to make much of a showing in the March 14 election. Putin has remained Russia's most popular politician since his 2000 election. Recent opinion surveys have shown about 80 percent of respondents saying they would vote for Putin.

Putin appears so confident of being re-elected that he has said that he will not participate in television debates or use free airtime. That goes along with the image he cultivated in his first election as a strong leader who doesn't need conventional advertising.

But regardless, Russia's state-controlled television attentively and glowingly covers Putin's every move.

Glazyev, who is a favorite to come in a very distant second to Putin, has accused Kremlin officials of using state-controlled television channels in a smear campaign against him.

The other candidates include Sergei Mironov, speaker of the upper house of parliament, who says he is running not to challenge Putin but to support him, and two marginal, little-known figures from the Communist and ultranationalist Liberal Democratic parties.