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A Russian media star who dramatically left the country last week said over the weekend that she is “probably in big trouble.”
Ksenia Sobchak, who is rumored to be the godmother of President Vladimir Putin, posted on Telegram on Saturday that she has been cut off from friends and family since she fled to Lithuania on October 25.
Sobchak secretly left Russia after Kirill Sukhanov, commercial director of media company Ostorozhno.Media, was arrested on charges of extortion — a move she condemned as an attempt to intimidate the media.
According to the state-controlled TASS news agency, citing Russian police, Sobchak confused the authorities by buying flights to Dubai but then crossed overland through Belarus to Lithuania.
After she left, police searched her home in Moscow and named her a suspect in the case, TASS reported.
In her Telegram post on Saturday, Sobchak wrote: “My thoughts are with my family, from whom I am separated.”
Later in the post he added: “Yes, I’m in trouble. Possibly, big trouble.” He did not clarify what he 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 defense chief of Rostec group.
However, as of Friday, police had revoked that status and now consider her a witness, TASS reported. The publication reported this Saturday, in an article published after Sobchak’s publication.
Sobchak did not respond to Insider’s request for comment. A representative identified on her Instagram profile only as “Lena” said she had no contact with Sobchak at the time of publication and did not confirm her whereabouts Monday. Two other representatives did not comment. everyone answered the Russian phone numbers.
On Friday, Lithuanian intelligence services confirmed that Sobchak was in the country, where they said she has the right to stay for 90 days.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) greets Ksenia Sobchak (R) in the Kremlin, Russia, March 19, 2018, when Sobchak was a liberal opposition candidate in the presidential election. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
Sobchak is one of Russia’s biggest media stars and has family ties to Putin – with a long-standing rumor that she is the president’s godmother.
She is the daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, a former mayor of St. Petersburg who used Putin as a deputy and helped rise to power. According to Politico, Putin attended Ksenia Sobchak’s christening.
Sobchak’s glamorous lifestyle and reality TV career earned her the nickname “The Russian Paris Hilton,” an image she tried to shed as her media career matured and when, in 2018, she ran for president.
While the challenge has been met 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 Sukhanov’s arrest, he wrote: “It is obvious that this is a raid on my publishing house, the last free publishing house in Russia, which had to be closed,” according to a translation by the Washington Post.
In her most recent post addressing her condition, Sobchak decried the backlash she had received in the Russian media, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported.
Citing several examples of what he described as “bullying” and fake news, he wrote bitterly about the coverage, saying: “My God, how you all must hate me, just because I’m not a member of any group. How you like to tear me apart!
“And I hate you for being so shallow and petty. Yes, I’m in trouble. Possibly, big trouble. I’m glad it brought a smile to your face on this dark afternoon.”
