Ksenia Sobchak, a Russian journalist, one-time presidential candidate, and former socialite has fled the country following a raid on her home, The New York Post reports.
Sobchak, who is rumored to be the goddaughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has reportedly taken refuge in Lithuania where she gained entry using an Israeli passport, officials in the city of Vilnius told Agence France-Presse. Russian state media previously said that Sobchak is a suspect in an extortion case allegedly involving her media director, Kirill Sukhanov.
In a statement on Telegram posted Tuesday, Sobchak said that the allegations against Sukhanov are “ravings and nonsense,” saying that his arrest was part of an ongoing push to silence independent reporting in Russia.
“Our commercial director Kirill Sukhanov has been arrested. They are trying to charge him with extortion,” Sobchak wrote, according to NBC News.
“I don’t believe [the charges against Sukhanov] at all, and I hope that now they will quickly sort everything out and will see that all this is some kind of nonsense,” she continued. “If not, then it is obviously a raid on my editorial office — the last free editorial office in Russia, which had to be clamped down.
Political analyst Sergei Markov recently wrote on Telegram that this incident has sent a message to the elites of Russia that “there are no untouchables.”
He wrote: “If they can arrest the daughter of Putin’s patron … it means there are no untouchables. For some members of the elites, an arrest warrant for Sobchak is a blazing sign in the skies.”
CNN reports that Sobchak’s late father, politician Anatoly Sobchak, acted as a mentor to Putin during his early career in politics.
Ksenia Sobchak began protesting against Putin’s government in the 2010s, but encountered criticism from opposition groups after she launched her presidential bid in 2018, which opposition leader Alexey Navalny dismissed as a “Kremlin project.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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