- A Russian media star with strong ties to Putin has fled the country, according to several reports.
- An official there said that Ksenia Sobchak, who is rumored to be Putin’s daughter, is in Lithuania.
- Sobchak left after her home was searched in connection with a high-profile racketeering case.
A prominent journalist rumored to be the divine daughter of President Vladimir Putin has fled Russia, according to multiple reports.
Ksenia Sobchak left Russia and entered Lithuania with an Israeli passport late Tuesday, The state-controlled media agency TASS reportedciting unnamed law enforcement officials.
On Wednesday, police searched her home in Moscow as part of an extortion case targeting one of her colleagues, Tass said, citing again an anonymous law enforcement source. The source said that there is a warrant for her arrest.
Sobchak sought to confuse police by buying tickets to Dubai and Turkey, before fleeing to Lithuania via Belarus by road late on Tuesday, TASS reported.
The video circulated on social media, which Insider could not verify, appears to show her walking across the Belarusian-Lithuanian border accompanied by two men.
Sobchak, who runs the Ostorozhno.Media group, fled after its commercial director Kirill Sukhanov was arrested and his home was searched.
After Sukhanov’s arrest, she Posted on Telegram He said the case was “nonsense” and “other pressures on the press in the country”.
In the same case, the former editor of the Russian Tatler magazine, Ariane Romanovsky, was arrested. I mentioned tas.
TASS reported that the Russian authorities accused the two of extortion from the head of the defense bloc Rostec.
Ksenia Sobchak at the demonstration in 2011
Misha Jabaridze / AFP
Sobchak, 40, is a prominent TV presenter and socialite who became famous through reality TV shows. She later distanced herself from her image as “Russia Paris Hilton.” Bid for the presidency of Russia .
The daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, she was the first mayor of St Petersburg in the post-Soviet period in the early 1990s and appointed Vladimir Putin as her deputy.
Putin did Since then, Sobchak has been described as a teacherand it has long been rumored that Ksenia is the daughter of God for Putin.
Although she has taken a liberal stance at times and criticized Putin’s government, some critics have played her part in the presidential run. As a deception in stages To give the impression of a competitive election in Russia.
Putin has aggressively cracked down on the Russian media in recent years, an effort that, as of the invasion of Ukraine, has silenced the country’s independent press.
Lithuanian counterintelligence chief Darius Ioneskis said Sobchak has the right to stay in Lithuania for 90 days, I mentioned tas.
