“She is in Lithuania,” Darius Jauniskis, the country’s intelligence chief, confirmed last week. The 40-year-old entered the country with an Israeli passport. “She doesn’t need a visa and can stay here for 90 days if I’m not mistaken.”
Last week, justice arrested a confidant of Sobchak for alleged extortion. State media report that Sobchak is also under investigation. The investigations were not officially confirmed, but the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said there were “more serious allegations” against Sobchak than just extortion.
Lithuania, like its Baltic neighbors and Poland, has cut access to many people from the neighboring country in response to Russia’s war against Ukraine. This was mainly due to safety concerns. “We have not yet received any concrete intelligence that she could pose a threat to the Lithuanian state,” Yauniskis said of Sobchak.
Who is Ksenia Sobchak?
The journalist is the daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, who as mayor of Saint Petersburg in the 1990s was a political mentor to Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin. For a long time, therefore, she enjoyed more freedom in Russia than other opposition members.
In 2018, Sobchak ran for the Russian presidency against incumbent Vladimir Putin. At the time, however, observers accused Sobchak of running for election just to create the appearance of competition. Sobchak is said to be Putin’s goddaughter. Her father Anatoly, the late mayor of Saint Petersburg, was once the head of the Russian president. She has her own YouTube channel with over three million subscribers.
(SDA)