MOSCOW, Jan. 20 - Igor, a homeless man who lives in Moscow's Paveletsky train station, stumbled out of one of this city's police-run drunk tanks at around 6 p.m. Friday with an indignant complaint.

"I wasn't even drunk," he said, pulling a soiled stocking cap around his ears against an icy wind, which was blowing swirls of snow crystals almost horizontally past him.

Igor, who only offered his first name, had just poured himself a drink this afternoon, he said, when the police detained him. "They said I was drinking, but I hadn't even started," he said.