Vladimir Radchenko's first day on the job as acting chief tax inspector for Dagestan, a region in southern Russia, did not go smoothly. As he stepped into the office on February 6, he was confronted by the son of the president of the autonomous republic, escorted from the building by two men with pistols, stuffed into a car, driven around the capital city for an hour and threatened with death if he ever set foot in the region again.
That was just the start of a very bad week. A lesser bureaucrat, faced with the same, would probably have put in for a transfer. But not Mr Radchenko, who stormed back to the tax inspectorate a few days later in the company, it seems, of a group of heavily armed men who work for a local governor, trying to gain entry to his office. Waiting there was a similarly armed gang who work for a local bank, whose owner is friendly to Mukhu Aliev, the president of Dagestan.
Officials in both Moscow and Dagestan are still not sure what happened during the week-long standoff nor can they explain fully the bizarre behaviour by both sides. In the end, no shots were fired, Mr Radchenko is now in hiding, and Mr Aliev told a television interviewer that the official “will never work in Dagestan”.