Who is Ksenia Sobchak? Russia's 'Paris Hilton' Victim Of Kremlin Raids On Opposition [VIDEO]
She is the glamorous TV presenter and socialite who earned the nickname Russia's Paris Hilton.
But after 30-year-old beauty Ksenia Sobchak switched from supporting President Vladimir Putin to vocal support of the opposition movement last year, she has become a target for the Kremlin's heavies.
On Monday her house was among several raided by security forces, with Sobchak ordered to appear at a police station only hours before a major anti-government rally took place in Moscow on Tuesday.
The blonde party girl, a regular on the Moscow scene, is the daughter of St. Petersburg's first post-Soviet mayor, Anatoly Sobchak.
Anatoly was a close ally of Putin, with their friendship stretching back to the 1980s.
It was only after December's parliamentary elections -- which saw Putin's United Russia party make solid gains -- that Sobchak came out as a vocal supporter of the opposition movement.
The move has cost her dearly, with Russian MTV dropping her talk show, Gosdep, after just one episode.
An outcast from the heavily state-influenced mainstream media, Sobchak has taken to the blogosphere and launched Gosdep-2 on niche channels that favor the opposition movement.
Her Twitter account, xenia_sobchak, is one of the most popular in Russia and boasts more than 430,000 followers.
In the runup to the March presidential election, Sobchak also had a viral video hit with a mock pro-Putin campaign video (below).
In the video, the normally primped Sobchak appears nervous and unkempt, as she explains why she supports Putin.
I have decided to vote for this candidate because the economy and standard of living in our country have become much better, she says, according to Radio Free Europe.
He has always been responsive to any request. He has helped us all. And especially now, with the threat of an Orange Revolution like in Syria or Libya, we can't rock the boat. We must rally around one leader. This is why I made this difficult decision.
The camera then pans out, revealing that she is in fact strapped to a chair and has been coerced into making the statement, before being gagged and dragged off by two masked policemen.
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