https://news.yahoo.com/russian-journalist-sobchak-flees-russia-163000232.html
The New Voice of Ukraine
Russian journalist Sobchak flees Russia after her detention ordered –
Russian media
Wed, October 26, 2022 at 9:30 AM PDT
Propaganda media reported that Sobchak has left Russia, her house had
been searched
“The law enforcement officers had an investigator’s order to detain
Sobchak, but she managed to escape,” the TASS report on the Telegram
messenger, reads referring to a source in the Russian police.
Sobchak is assumed to have fled after learning that the security forces
would try to detain her in on the afternoon of Oct. 26 on suspicion of
extortion.
It is also reported that before leaving for Lithuania, the journalist
bought two flight tickets to Dubai to confuse operatives and avoid
detention.
“At the same time, she bought flight tickets online to Dubai yesterday,
and to Turkey today,” TASS said.
“She did this to confuse the operatives. Following that, she entered
Lithuania via Belarus.”
Russian Telegram messengers reported that Sobchak’s country house had
been searched early on Oct. 26 after the Russian police had arrested her
commercial director, Kirill Sukhanov, a day earlier.
He is a suspect in the extortion case.
Three days ago, Sobchak posted on Instagram a photo taken in Moscow,
noting that she “loves Moscow autumn.”
Sobchak is the daughter of the first democratically elected mayor of
Saint Petersburg, the late Anatoly Sobchak, a close associate of now
Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in the 1990s in Saint Petersburg. Putin
is said to have helped Sobchak flee Russia in 1997 when the latter was
wanted on corruption charges, and in 1999, when Putin became Russian
prime minister, the charges were dropped and Sobchak was able to return
to Russia.
Ksenia Sobchak is reported to have received an Israeli passport in April
2022. She has previously criticized Russia’s war of aggression against
Ukraine.
AND
https://news.yahoo.com/investigators-raid-home-russian-celeb-141407226.html
Associated Press
Wed, October 26, 2022 at 7:14 AM
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian investigators on Wednesday raided the home of
Ksenia Sobchak, the glamourous daughter of Russian President Vladimir
Putin's one-time boss, in a move that has sent shockwaves through the
country's political scene.
Sobchak, a 40-year-old TV star, has often been critical of Putin, but
many Russian opposition figures have accused her of serving the
Kremlin’s agenda. 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 critics described as a Kremlin effort to add a
democratic veneer to Putin's sweeping re-election.
Investigators said that the search at Sobchak's luxury home in a
prestigious Moscow suburb was part of a probe into alleged wrongdoing by
her media director, Kirill Sukhanov, who was arrested on charges of
extortion.
Sobchak on Tuesday rejected the accusations against Sukhanov as “ravings
and nonsense” and described his arrest as part of the authorities'
efforts to stifle independent media.
The state Tass and RIA-Novosti news agencies said that Sobchak had fled
Russia. Tass claimed she had bought tickets to Dubai and Turkey to
mislead the authorities but eventually left for Belarus, from where she
moved to Lithuania. The reports claimed that investigators suspected
Sobchak of being involved in the extortion scheme along with her media
director and alleged that a warrant was issued for her arrest.
Tass also cited information from the probe indicating that Sergei
Chemezov, a long time Putin associate who heads the state Rostec
corporation, a conglomerate controlling Russian aviation industries and
other high-tech assets, was the victim of alleged extortion.
The claims couldn’t be independently confirmed. Sobchak hasn't commented
on the allegations and her whereabouts were unknown.
Sobchak has extensive contacts among Russia’s rich and powerful, and the
search of her home topped domestic news.
Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, argued that the raid has
sent a signal to members of 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. “For some members of
the elites, an arrest warrant for Sobchak is a blazing sign in the skies.”
Sobchak is the daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, a liberal mayor of St.
Petersburg for whom Putin served as a deputy in the 1990s.
Sobchak has 9.4 million followers on Instagram, and her glamour, sharp
wit and defiant ways have made her both loved and loathed.
She first gained fame as a fashionable socialite and reality TV star and
was once dubbed the “Russian Paris Hilton,” but later sought to shed her
spoiled and arrogant image.
Sobchak got involved in politics when she joined the massive protests in
Moscow against Putin in 2011-12, and later reinvented herself as a
serious TV journalist and opposition activist.
Sobchak has denied serving the Kremlin's agenda by running as a
challenger to Putin in 2018. But opposition leader Alexei Navalny
denounced her for discrediting the opposition by joining the race,
saying that she was a “parody of a liberal candidate” and her
involvement in the campaign helped the Kremlin cast the opposition in a
negative light.
