One of Our Candidates Is Missing

Until this month, the Russian presidential campaign was an occasionally amusing but tightly scripted show. Comic relief was provided by independent candidate Sergei Mironov, who repeatedly stressed his support for the incumbent, President Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, the Kremlin-dominated media gave Putin blanket — and predictably positive — coverage. Then the script took a sinister turn: first, a suicide bomber killed over 40 people in the Moscow metro; Putin blamed Chechen separatists. Immediately after, it emerged that Ivan Rybkin, an opposition presidential candidate who, like most Putin challengers, is polling in the single digits, had disappeared. Just the week before, Rybkin had...