Thursday 27 October 2022 02:43 AM Vladimir Putin's 'goddaughter', 40, flees Russia hours after police raid her ... trends now
Vladimir Putin's goddaughter reportedly fled the country yesterday morning - hours after police raided her mansion after she allegedly criticised Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Ksenia Sobchak, 40, is understood to have boarded a flight to Lithuania via Belarus shortly before agents arrived at Moscow’s Vnukovo-3 airport to arrest her.
Putin has longstanding ties to her family and she is long rumoured to be his goddaughter. Her father, Anatoli Sobchak, was Putin's law professor and mentor who handed him his first foothold in politics as Deputy Mayor of St Petersburg.
Sobchak has known Putin since she was a child, and he attended her baptism.
But he is now poised to brand her a 'foreign agent' as part of a crackdown against dissent in Russia.
It is not yet clear what remarks she allegedly made that have angered Kremlin officials and led to the raid of her property.
It comes three after Sobchak was hit with a separate criminal investigation that could see her jailed for three years allegedly over 'spreading falsehoods about government agencies' on a media channel.
Ksenia Sobchak is understood to have boarded a flight to Lithuania via Belarus shortly before agents arrived at Moscow’s Vnukovo-3 airport to arrest her
Russian President Vladimir Putin is now poised to brand her a 'foreign agent' as part of a crackdown against dissent in Russia
Anatoly Sobchak pictured alongside Vladimir Putin in 1990s, to whom he had longstanding ties
The head of the shadowy Public Committee for the Detection of Foreign Intervention, Aleksandr Ionov, said a check was underway into whether Sobchak was funded from abroad. Her online media outlet Ostorozhno Novosti is also under investigation.
'If foreign funding is found, Sobchak will become
