Russian TV celebrity Ksenia Sobchak has arrived in Lithuania on an Israeli passport after fleeing Russian investigators who raided her home this week, officials said Thursday. Sobchak is the gorgeous daughter of Vladimir Putin’s former employer.
“Israeli citizens do not require a visa and are permitted to stay in the nation for 90 days,” Darius Jauniskis, head of the State Security Department in Lithuania, told a local radio station. Jauniskis stated that Lithuania has no proof that Sobchak poses a threat to national security.
Ksenia Sobchak, a journalist and news presenter, attends a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) on June 3, 2021, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. EVGENIA NOVOZHENINA / REUTERS
“If we had any evidence, we would take the necessary steps,” he told the radio station Ziniu Radijas.
Foreign Minister of Lithuania Gabrielius Landsbergis told reporters that “Ms. Sobchak is not currently featured on any EU, U.K., or U.S. sanctions list. This does not imply that the event is impossible.”
Sobschak had entered Europe’s passport-free travel zone, a 26-country territory containing the majority of EU members plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland, according to Landbergis. With a valid passport, Israeli citizens can travel freely within the Schengen visa-free zone in Europe.
“Ms. Sobchak may have already left Lithuanian territory because her movement to Poland, other European nations, and the north is unrestricted,” he stated, according to the Baltic News Service, the region’s primary news source.
Surveillance footage shows Sobchak entering Lithuania on foot and speaking with border agents.
In an effort to help Ukraine, Lithuania, the other Baltic states, and Poland stopped admitting Russian citizens with valid Schengen visas in September. Hundreds were denied entry at the border, but many others entered after displaying passports from other nations.
Sobchak, 40, has frequently criticized Putin, but many members of the Russian opposition have accused her of aiding the Kremlin’s agenda. In 2018, she ran as a liberal candidate in Russia’s presidential election, coming a distant fourth with approximately 1.7% of the vote in what her detractors regarded as a Kremlin attempt to provide a democratic veneer to Putin’s landslide re-election.
Russian media reported she purchased tickets to Dubai and Turkey in an attempt to mislead authorities, but she ultimately traveled to Lithuania from Belarus. The reports indicated that investigators suspected Sobchak and her media director of participating in an extortion conspiracy, and that an arrest warrant had been issued for Sobchak.
The Russian news agency Tass also said that Sergei Chemezov, a longstanding Putin associate who runs the state Rostec firm, a conglomerate owning Russian aviation industries and other high-tech assets, was the alleged victim of extortion.
The assertions could not be independently verified.
Sobchak described the action as an attempt by the Russian government to exert pressure on her media organization.
“It is evident that this is an attack on my editorial staff, the last remaining independent editorial team in Russia, which was subjected to pressure,” Sobchak stated on Telegram, which has 1.4 million followers.
Sobchak is the daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, a liberal mayor of St. Petersburg under whom Putin served as a representative in the 1990s. She has vast connections among Russia’s wealthy and influential, and the search of her home dominated local news.
She has 9.4 million Instagram followers, and her glitz, wit, and defiance have made her both adored and reviled. Sobchak initially rose to prominence as a glamorous socialite and reality TV star and was even labeled the “Russian Paris Hilton,” but she later attempted to shed her spoilt and haughty reputation. In 2011 and 2012, she joined the large anti-Putin rallies in Moscow and afterwards reinvented herself as a professional TV journalist and opposition activist.
Sobchak has denied helping the goal of the Kremlin by challenging Putin in 2018. Alexei Navalny, the leader of the opposition, criticized her for undermining the opposition by entering the race, stating that she was a “parody of a liberal candidate” and that her participation helped the Kremlin portray the opposition in an unfavorable light.
Earlier in the week, Kirill Sukhanov, the commercial director of Attention Media, was arrested as part of the inquiry.
Attention Media manages a variety of social media initiatives, including Sobchak’s YouTube channel, which has over three million subscribers.
Sobchak stated via Telegram, “Kirill, we love you, but we do not believe anything,”
This report was aided by AFP.