Who is Putin's goddaughter? Footage captures Ksenia Sobchak fleeing Russia ON FOOT
VILNIUS, LITHUANIA: A new camera footage shows the exact moment when Vladimir Putin’s alleged goddaughter left for the West on foot. It is being reported that Ksenia Sobchak, feared arrest by the authorities in the wake of a police raid carried out at her mansion. The 40-year-old is a TV star and opposition politician, who had criticized the Russian leader openly in the past and entered Lithuania, via the Belarusian border. The footage showed her at the Vidzy frontier point 106 miles north of Minsk, as per the reports.
The CCTV camera also captured the former socialite and Playboy model with an unidentified man, who was seen carrying her bag, and Sobchak covering her face and wearing a cap as she crossed the border, reported RIA Novosti news agency. The video was captured by a Belarusian security camera, however, it was leaked, and Lithuania, on Thursday, October 27, confirmed her entry into the country while holding an Israeli passport.
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In the video, Sobchak was also seen repeatedly looking behind her checking whether she was being followed. The man accompanying her was at one time seen warning the politician to lower her head to escape the cameras. As per the video footage, Sobchak was going through Belarus passport control at 1.32 pm local time on Wednesday, October 26, while telling a border control officer that her destination is Lithuania, reported Daily Mail.
The woman is then accompanied by two uniformed men to the actual frontier. It is believed that the video got out in the knowledge of officials to a Telegram channel called Three Sisters, which has a little less than 2,000 subscribers. The channel has links to the security apparatus of Belarus President, Alexander Lukashenko.
Darius Jauniskis, Lithuania's Director of the State Security Department (VSD) has confirmed that Sobchak is indeed in Lithuania and since she had an Israeli passport she could get into the country without the requirement of a visa for 90 days. “So far we do not have intelligence information that she may pose a threat to the Lithuanian state,” Jauniskis said. “If there was such information, of course, certain measures would be taken,” he added, as per the report.
Officially Lithuania is now barring entry to Russian citizens due to the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war. In the video, no attempt was made to stop her at the Belarusian border despite Sobchak being held as a suspect in a case pertaining to her business associate. She has already labeled the investigation to be politically motivated but could have possibly landed her in prison with up to 15 years sentence.
According to the report, she had interestingly bought tickets to both Turkey and Dubai which seemed to be an attempt to "confuse" Russian authorities as the state investigators seek her arrest.
Sobchak is the daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, who was Putin’s law professor and mentor. She first rose to prominence as a fashionable socialite and reality TV personality, earning the moniker "Paris Hilton of Moscow." She became politically active by participating in the Moscow protests against Putin in 2011–2012, and she later remade herself as a serious TV journalist and opposition activist.