Vladimir Putin’s ‘goddaughter’, 40, flees Russia hours after police raid her home

Vladimir Putin’s goddaughter is said to have fled the country yesterday morning – hours after police raided her mansion after criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ksenia Sobchak, 40, is said to have boarded a flight to Lithuania via Belarus shortly before agents arrived at Moscow’s Vnukovo-3 airport to arrest her.

Putin has long-standing ties to her family and is rumored to be his goddaughter. Her father, Anatoli Sobchak, was Putin’s law professor and mentor who gave 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 ready to label her as a “foreign agent” as part of a crackdown on dissent in Russia.

It is not yet clear what comments she allegedly made that angered Kremlin officials and led to the raid on her property.

It comes three times after Sobchak was hit by a separate criminal investigation, which reportedly sent her to three years in prison for “spreading falsehoods about government agencies” on a media outlet.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is now ready to label her as a ‘foreign agent’ as part of a crackdown on dissent in Russia

Anatoly Sobchak pictured next to Vladimir Putin in the 1990s, with whom he had a long relationship

The head of the shadowy public commission for the detection of foreign intervention, Aleksandr Ionov, said Sobchak was being checked to see if it was financed from abroad. Her online media outlet Ostorozhno Novosti is also under investigation.

“If foreign funding is found, Sobchak becomes a foreign agent,” Ionov said.

But Sobchak has claimed the probe is to pressure her and her media.

Despite Putin’s ties to her family, she has vehemently opposed his authoritarian policies in recent years.

She said: ‘Our commercial director Kirill Sukhanov is being held, as they said, for ‘blackmail’. This is just delirium, it’s laughable, nonsense.’

“Kirill is a businessman and our advertising executive. Myself and our entire team see this as even more suppression of the media in the country. They have nothing to dig at us, which makes them furious.

They are constantly detaining our journalists. Now they’ve got Kirill and they’re going to file a case against him. The lawyer is in contact with him. We’re following the case.’

Other Sobchak employees are being questioned, it was reported.

Such were Putin’s ties to the family, he smuggled Mr. Sobchak out of Russia to get medical treatment in the west when his patron was wanted for alleged corruption.

Putin, Lyudmila Narusova and Ksenia Sobchak photographed together in Saint Petersburg in November 2003

Ksenia was previously a popular reality TV host and posed for Playboy before entering politics

He was later photographed at Mr. Sobchak’s funeral along with Ksenia and her mother Lyudmila Narusova, a Russian senator in 2000.

She has voted against war legislation in Russia’s parliament, accusing state television of “blatant lies” about the conflict.

Ksenia – one of Russia’s most famous faces – came fourth in Russia’s 2018 presidential election, widely seen as heavily manipulated in Putin’s favour.

Despite criticism of Putin, she held a face-to-face meeting with the Russian leader before announcing she would oppose him in the poll.

Ksenia was previously a popular reality TV host and posed for Playboy.

She is said to be the subject of an investigation into an article about the “public dissemination of intentionally false information about the exercise of her authority by a government agency” – a new law enacted after the start of the war with Ukraine with a penalty of up to up to three years in prison.

Authorities say Sergey Chemezov, CEO of Rostec Corporation, had written a statement claiming Sobchak and others were “extortion.”

On this basis, Kirill Sukhanov and former Russian Tatler editor Arian Romanovsky were detained.

They are reportedly facing a criminal investigation that could lead to prison terms ranging from seven to 15 years.