Ksenia Sobchak, 40, was seen leaving Belarus on border cameras (Pictures: east2west news)
Vladimir Putin’s goddaughter was filmed crossing the border from Belarus into Lithuania.
Ksenia Sobchak, 40, used her Israeli passport to enter the EU country yesterday, state officials have confirmed.
CCTV captured her walking in a cap with her head down while an unnamed man was seen carrying her bag.
A border control officer asked her ‘where she was heading’, which Ms Sobchak answered truthfully.
She reportedly bought tickets to both Turkey and Dubai to ‘confuse’ Russian investigators while travelling to Belarus by car.
It is believed Ms Sobchak – whose dad gave Putin his political start as his deputy when he served as mayor of St Petersburg – was running away from persecution.
Moscow state investigators are looking into whether Ms Sobchak, who allegedly criticised the invasion of Ukraine, was ‘funded from abroad’. Her online media outlet, Ostorozhno Novosti, is also under investigation.
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Ms Sobchak is currently being investigated for possibly using foreign funding (Picture: AP)
If foreign funding is found, ‘Sobchak will become a foreign agent’, the Kremlin warned.
Many suspect Putin has actually allowed Ms Sobchak to leave – rather than see the woman dubbed his ‘goddaughter’ held in detention like his other political foes.
Clues to support this include the fact that Russian state media announced she had left for Lithuania just 36 minutes after she was cleared for exit by a Belarus border guard who did not try to stop her.
The video was leaked to a Telegram channel called Three Sisters, reportedly linked to Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko’s security.
Lithuania has blocked Russian citizens from entering the country since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ms Sobchak ran against Putin in 2018 (Picture: Getty)
She was once called the ‘Paris Hilton of Moscow’ (Picture: East2West News)
That is why Ms Sobchak used her Israeli passport, which grants her access to the European nation for 90 days without a visa.
The director of Lithuania’s state security department, Darius Jauniskis, told radio station Zhinyu Radijas: ‘So far, we do not have intelligence information that she may pose a threat to the Lithuanian state.
‘If there was such information, of course, certain measures would be taken.’
Putin has known Ms Sobchak since she was a child and attended her baptism in the Orthodox Church.
But the socialite-turned-politician, who was once called the ‘Paris Hilton of Moscow’, grew up to become a critic of the Kremlin.
She even went head-to-head with Putin in the 2018 Russian election.
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Putin has known Ksenia Sobchak since she was a child and went to her baptism.