- A prominent Russian media star who fled the country posted saying she is in “big trouble.”
- Ksenia Sobchak, who has family ties to Putin, was confirmed last week as being in Lithuania.
- She has since posted about a media backlash and said she was cut off from her loved ones.
A Russian media star who dramatically fled the country last week said over the weekend that she was “possibly in big trouble.”
Ksenia Sobchak, who is rumored to be the god-daughter of President Vladimir Putin, posted to Telegram on Saturday that she was cut off from her friends and family ever since her escape to Lithuania on October 25.
Sobchak sneaked out of Russia after Kirill Sukhanov, the commercial director of her media company Ostorozhno.Media, was arrested on accusations of extortion — a move she condemned as an attempt to intimidate the media.
According to the state-controlled media outlet TASS, which cited Russian police, Sobchak confounded authorities by buying flights to Dubai but then crossing by land instead, via Belarus to Lithuania.
After she left, police searched her Moscow home and she was named a suspect in the case, TASS reported.
In her Telegram post on Saturday, Sobchak wrote: “My thoughts are with my family, who I have been separated from.”
Later in the post she added: “Yes, I am in trouble. Possibly, in big trouble.” She did not make clear what she was referring to.
Russian police had named Sobchak as a suspect in the extortion case, which accuses Sukhanov, the commercial director, as well as another media mogul — former Russian Tatler editor Arian Romanovsky — of extorting millions of rubles from the head of the defense conglomerate Rostec.
However, as of Friday police had canceled this status and now regard her as a witness, TASS reported. The outlet reported this on Saturday, in an article published after Sobchak had posted.
Sobchak did not respond to Insider’s request for comment. A representative named on her Instagram profile only as “Lena” said she has no contact with Sobchak at time of publication, and did not confirm her whereabouts as of Monday. Two further representatives did not comment; all answered Russian phone numbers.
On Friday, Lithuanian intelligence services confirmed that Sobchak was in the country, where they said she has the right to remain for 90 days.
Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
Sobchak is one of Russia’s biggest media stars, and has family ties to Putin — with one longstanding rumor saying she is the president’s god-daughter.
She is the daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, a former mayor of St Petersburg who employed Putin as a deputy and aided is rise to power. According to Politico, Putin attended Ksenia Sobchak’s baptism.
Sobchak’s glamorous lifestyle and reality TV career earned her the nickname “Russia’s Paris Hilton,” an image she attempted to shed as her media career matured and when, in 2018, she ran as a presidential candidate.
While the challenge was viewed with skepticism by pro-democracy activists, Sobchak has espoused some liberal positions, such as her 2014 criticism of the annexation of Crimea, as Politico reported.
After the arrest of Sukhanov, she wrote: “It is obvious that this is a raid on my editorial office, the last free editorial office in Russia, which had to be shut down,”according to a translation by The Washington Post.
In her most recent post referring to her situation, Sobchak decried a backlash she had received in Russian media, as Russian newspaper Kommersant reported.
Citing numerous examples of what she described as “bullying” and fake news, she wrote bitterly about the coverage, saying: “God, how you all must hate me, simply for not being a part of any group. How you love ripping me apart!
“And I do detest you for being so shallow and petty. Yes, I am in trouble. Possibly, in big trouble. I am glad this has brought you a smile this dark evening.”
