After a career on lower ranks of the Communist Party, Rybkin was elected as peoples' deputy to the congress of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic in 1990.

Ivan Rybkin Bloc got 1.39% of the vote in the 1995 Russian legislative election, falling short of a 5% electoral threshold.

During the campaign, on 2 February 2004, he accused incumbent President Vladimir Putin of organizing terrorist acts in Russia in 1999 and of being involved in shady business activities with Yury Kovalchuk, Mikhail Kovalchuk, Gennady Timchenko, KiNEx and the Russia Bank, which allegedly swallowed up a vast share of the nation's financial flows.

A day before his disappearance he accused the Putin administration of complicity in the 1999 bomb attacks in Moscow that led to a war in the Russian breakaway republic of Chechnya.

“I often visit Kyiv, my friends and I walk the streets, especially since the weather was good there this weekend.”[7] Later, he stated that he had been kidnapped and drugged by Russian FSB agents[8] who lured him to Ukraine promising to arrange meeting with the former Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov.

[9][10] According to Alexander Litvinenko, the FSB agents apparently treated Rybkin with their standard truth drug.

[8][11] Rybkin said he feared for his safety if he returned to Russia, and whilst he initially continued the campaign from abroad, on 5 March 2004, he withdrew from the race, saying he did not want to be part of "this farce," as he called the elections.