I don’t know how much of you have been following this – but the missing Russian politician has been found.
Rybkin said he was just taking a break. In the Ukraine. Without telling anyone where he was going. Nobody. He vanished.
Rybkin had this to say for himself:
“I didn’t disappear anywhere. I bought a newspaper today and was stunned.”
Uh … what?
Even the people working on his campaign had no idea where he went. It was a very suspicious situation. He was a harsh critic of Putin. And then – poof – he disappears. Another member of the Liberal Russia party, of which he was a member, was assassinated last year. So obviously, the situation did not look good. Had Rybkin been wiped out? Had someone killed him?
Where the hell was he?
Well, he was hanging out with his friends in Kiev, cell phone turned off.
Clearly, he is not cut out to be the leader of a massive country like Russia if he can’t understand what the big deal is about his disappearance. He “decided to have a rest from the fuss which has surrounded me”, and took off without a word. Uh – sorry. If you’re the president of Russia you can’t do that.
He didn’t even tell his wife where he was going. Here’s a quote I love:
“I left fruit and money for my wife.”
If I were his wife, I would take that fruit and I would throw it at his head. Repeatedly. (As though they were pretzels.)
Surreal and inexplicable is just a part of our nature: there’s a reason Churchill called Russia a mystery wrapped in a riddle surrounded by an enigma, or something like that. Yes, it’s very possible that he’s lying through his teeth to conceal the fiendish machinations behind the real reasons for his temporary disappearance, but it’s equally possible that, bizarrely, everything he said is true.
It strikes me that he is telling the truth. But I have no evidence, so it is relatively meaningless.
Attention like that does wacko things to your head.
To bring up a pop-culture reference – member when Pretty Woman came out, catapulting Julia Roberts to mega-stardom – and she promptly disappeared from view and didn’t make another movie for 2 and a half years.
Maybe this guy didn’t realize, on a gut-level, how white-hot that spotlight could actually get.
I wish some of our politicians would leave their wives some fruit/money and just dissappear.
Pat W –
I believe that was Gary Hart’s campaign strategy way back when.
“Hey…honey? Here’s some fruit and money … I’m … gonna go … monkey around on a cruise with Donna Rice … clicking my maracas … I’ve left enough fruit to tide you over…”
It’s all so 1984, like he was dragged to the Ministry of Peace for a little “attitude re-adjustment”. Russian politics are sketchy at best and openly sketchy at that.
There is a very tribal nature to it all. The USSR just forced all these previously warring factions to come together. As soon as the oppressive regime was removed, the tribes fell back into their groups, reclaimed their names and began fighting again.
I don’t hold much hope for democracy ever truly taking a foothold there. It’s Orwellian indeed. The Pigs have become the Farmers. Actually, Putin hasn’t changed at all. Seems he’s to be putting his skills as the former head of the KGB to work.
I have no insights to offer regarding Russian politics, but I can’t help but think that the title of this post puts me in mind of a Douglas Adams novel.
Dan –
Yes, you are quite right. It should definitely be said in a sardonic “over-it” voice.
It was just such a random quote … that’s what makes me think he is telling the truth. It’s too bizarre to be made up. “I left fruit and money for my wife…”
That whole story is a riot.
The Russians never fail to entertain.
I don’t doubt for a minute that the story is true, except that he was almost certainly on a quick road trip with his mistress.
But Red: You might not be able to do this if you were the President of the United States – in Russia however you definitely CAN get away with it. During the Soviet coup in 1991, Gorbachev disappeared for quite a while. We thought he had been X’ed, but then he turned up. The same thing happened many years ago with Lavrenti Beria, only he actually had been whacked.
Also this Rybkin guy is positively dull compared to Zhirinovski.
CW – A road trip with a mistress is certainly possible in Russian politics, but this is just too weird. This guy was positioning himself to be a Yeltsin (in his Moscow mayor days) to Putin’s Gorbachev. This goofy escapade scuttled that.
I lived in the USSR from 1989-1991 (leaving just months before the coup, damn it). It strikes me as significant that this guy goes to the Ukraine. He might have been looking for the possibility of diplomatic protection (unlikely), or he could have been having conversations with leading mafia people. It may have been the mafia telling him to lay off Putin, or he may have been asking for their protection, I’m not sure where the balance of power now lies. Putin and his ex-KGB cronies are distancing themselves from their mafia ties, but when I was there, the KGB and the mafia had an uneasy truce, and it was often hard to tell who was paying whom.
The trade routes (guns, stolen cars, drugs) for the mafia run through the Ukraine and Belorus. I think it’s significant that Rybkin wound up there. The Ukraine is a kind of clearing house for shady deals. One of the guys in my Karate studio (Lithuania, circa 1990)used to run vodka to Yugoslavia through Belorus and the Ukraine, and return with things people wanted in Lithuania. He was shot and killed in Beograd on one of his bootleg runs. I don’t think that things have changed much since then.
And Sheila, you have to have lived in a country with as cold a climate and as poor a distribution system as Russia to appreciate the gift of fruit. As the sign used to say in the cafeteria in Moscow: “Scurvy has been virtually eliminated”.
John:
If he was positioning himself to be another Yeltsin, vanishing for several days fits perfectly. Yeltsin is a severe alcoholic who would go on multi-WEEK benders while governing Moscow, then all of Russia.
Of course he did hurt is political career by his stunt. I guess he didn’t quite understand the procedures. Normally Russian leaders try not to be observed vanishing mysteriously until AFTER they are elected/selected/seize power, etc.
Maybe he was kidnapped in the Ukraine by gangsters, but I still think it was more like a wild weekend with his mistress. Odessa is a very popular “getaway spot” for Russian politicians anyway.
John –
Ah… Scurvy. Very excellent point.
But still. It’s rather comical – just the way he said it.
“Here, honey, I’m off to Kiev to cavort with my mistress … Don’t get scurvy while I’m gone…”