In a move that has shocked the nation’s political scene, Russian investigators stormed the home of Ksenia Sobchak, the glitzy daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s former employer.
The 40-year-old television personality Sobchak has criticised Putin frequently, but many members of the Russian opposition have claimed that she is merely advancing Kremlin interests. In 2018, she became a liberal challenger in Russia’s presidential election, finishing a distant fourth with about 1.
7% of the vote in what her detractors criticised as a Kremlin attempt to give Putin’s reelection victory a democratic guise.
The search at Sobchak’s opulent residence in a prestigious Moscow neighbourhood, according to investigators, was a component of an investigation into alleged wrongdoing by her media director, Kirill Sukhanov, who was detained on extortion-related charges.
Sukhanov’s charges were previously denied by Sobchak as “ravings and rubbish,” and his detention was seen as an effort by the government to crush independent journalism.
Sobchak reportedly left Russia, according to the official news agencies Tass and RIA-Novosti. Tass claimed she had purchased tickets to Dubai and Turkey in an effort to deceive the authorities, but she ultimately travelled to Belarus before relocating to Lithuania.
According to the sources, a warrant for Sobchak’s arrest was issued because investigators believed she and her media director were complicit in the extortion plan.
According to information from the investigation, Sergei Chemezov, a longtime friend of Vladimir Putin and the president of the state-owned Rostec firm, which oversees the Russian aviation industry and other high-tech assets, was the target of purported extortion, according to Tass.
The assertions were unable to be independently verified.
Sobchak hasn’t responded to the accusations, and it’s unclear where she is right now.
Due of Sobchak’s enormous network of influential people in Russia, the search for her home became national headlines.
A pro-Kremlin political expert named Sergei Markov said that the raid has informed the Russian elite that all bets are off.
“If they can arrest the daughter of Putin’s patron. . . it means there are no untouchables,” Markov wrote in a commentary.
“An arrest warrant for Sobchak is a bright symbol in the skies for some elites,”
Sobchak is the daughter of liberal St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, whose deputy Putin was in the 1990s.
Sobchak has 9.4 million Instagram followers, and thanks to her glitz, humour, and defiant demeanour, she is both adored and despised.
She first rose to fame as a stylish socialite and reality TV star, earning the nickname “Russian Paris Hilton,” but later tried to shed her spoilt and haughty reputation.
Sobchak first became politically active when she participated in the large-scale anti-Putin demonstrations in Moscow in 2011–2012. She later remade herself as a serious TV journalist and opposition activist.
Sobchak has denied that his intention in challenging Putin in 2018 was to further the goals of the Kremlin.
Alexei Navalny, the leader of the opposition, called her a “parody of a liberal candidate” and said that by running, she had damaged the reputation of the opposition and helped the Kremlin portray it negatively.
Investigators search Ksenia Sobchak’s residence in Russia.
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