Raid on Ksenia Sobchak
Daughter of Putin’s foster father flees to Lithuania
10/27/2022, 11:40 am
Xenia Sobchak repeatedly criticized the Russian attack on Ukraine on her YouTube channel – and yet remained unmolested for months. Suddenly the police are investigating the former Russian presidential candidate. The 40-year-old thinks she knows why.
The prominent Russian TV presenter and former presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak has left her homeland for Lithuania. “She is in Lithuania,” confirmed the country’s intelligence chief, Darius Jauniskis, on the radio. The 40-year-old entered the country with an Israeli passport. “She doesn’t need a visa and can come here and stay for 90 days if I’m not mistaken.”
The journalist is the daughter of Anatoly Alexandrovich Sobchak, who, as mayor of St. Petersburg in the 1990s, was a political mentor to Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin. For a long time she therefore enjoyed more freedom in Russia than other members of the opposition. This week, however, the judiciary arrested a confidant of Sobchak for alleged extortion. State media reports that Sobchak is also under investigation. The investigations were not officially confirmed, but the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry indicated that there were “more serious allegations” once morest Sobchak than just extortion.
Sobchak ran once morest Putin in the Kremlin race. According to critics, this should give the election a touch of openness.
(Image: REUTERS)
The Russian news agency Tass and the state broadcaster RT, citing the police, reported that Sobchak is suspected of being involved in a case of large-scale extortion. Such an offense can be punished in Russia with up to 15 years imprisonment. Sobchak is reportedly Putin’s goddaughter. Her father Anatoly, the late mayor of St. Petersburg, was once the chief and professor of the Russian president.
“Attack on my editorial office”
According to Tass, Sobchak’s residence was already searched on Wednesday morning. In addition, the commercial manager of your media company Attention Media was arrested following he is said to have accepted a payment of 800,000 rubles (approx. 13,000 euros). Attention Media operates, among other things, Sobchak’s YouTube channel with more than three million subscribers. There, the journalist had repeatedly criticized the Russian attack on Ukraine in recent months.
On Telegram, Sobchak denied the allegations once morest her. It is an attempt to put pressure on your media company. “It is clear that this is an attack on my editorial office, the last free editorial office in Russia that had to be put under pressure,” wrote the 40-year-old. She hopes there is a misunderstanding.
Sobchak ran in the 2018 election for the Russian presidency once morest incumbent Putin. At the time, observers accused her of allowing herself to be exploited to give the election a semblance of competition.
