Russian officials say talks renewed with cave sect
MOSCOW (AFP) — Russian officials on Saturday said they had redoubled efforts to persuade 28 members of a doomsday sect holed up in a cave to come out, after seven others ended their five-month confinement.
Oleg Melnichenko, deputy governor of the Penza region, some 500 kilometres (310 miles) southeast of Moscow, said on national television that the seven had come out after conditions deteriorated in the cave, where they had lived since early November.
"The state of the cave is rather bad because it started filling with melted ice. Part of it has collapsed," said Melnichenko.
"In the interests of the people's security we have to negotiate with them in such a way that they trust us. We don't plan to trick them," he said.
Another regional official, Alexander Yelatontsev, said the seven who had come out were in good health and had given assurances about the state of those inside, including a girl aged one year and eight months.
Television pictures showed female sect members in head scarves speaking with those in the cave through a fissure in the hillside -- a barren landscape after months of winter snow.
The sect members, including citizens of both Russia and Belarus, barricaded themselves into the cave near the village of Nikolskoye in November to await the Apocalypse, which they originally calculated would come in May 2008.
Black-clad Orthodox priests have joined local authorities in trying to persuade the members to leave, so far with only limited success.
Earlier this week, the sect members said they would emerge on Orthodox Easter Sunday, April 27, according to Melnichenko.
They had previously threatened to blow themselves up with gas canisters if anyone tried to force them out.
Officials said they had plentiful reserves of food and water and were able to cook inside the cave.
Despite the rising influence of the Orthodox church, unofficial sects have rapidly grown in popularity in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The leader of the Penza sect, Pyotr Kuznetsov, has not joined his followers in the cave and has been detained in a psychiatric hospital, sometimes emerging to join negotiations.
