Ksenia Sobchak, Putin Challenger, Has Home Raided by Russian Police

Russian police raided the home of prominent Russian journalist and former presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak on Wednesday morning, state-run news agency Tass reported.

Authorities said Sobchak's Moscow home was raided in connection with a criminal case that has been opened against her commercial director, Kirill Sukhanov.

"[Sobchak's home] is being searched in an extortion case, in which her commercial director Kirill Sukhanov was detained. Sobchak herself has no procedural status," Tass cited law enforcement agencies as saying.

The search comes a day after Sukhanov was detained and taken to the Main Investigation Department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Moscow.

Authorities have yet to disclose details of the case.

Sobchak said on her Telegram channel Tuesday that Sukhanov had not been in touch with her since the morning.

"Our commercial director Kirill Sukhanov has been detained. They say it's for extortion," she wrote. "It's just nonsense."

"I and my entire editorial staff regard this as ANOTHER squeeze on journalism in the country…they keep detaining my journalists all the time. Now they have taken up Kirill and are making up a case for him. [His] lawyer is in touch with him.

"We are watching," she added.

Sobchak, 40, founded a popular Telegram channel that regularly shares posts which are critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin's mobilization efforts.

She challenged Putin in Russia's March 2018 presidential election when she was widely considered to be a "spoiler candidate."

Earlier in October, local Telegram channels said Russia's Prosecutor General's Office received an anonymous letter asking officials to penalize Sobchak for continuing to use Instagram after it was banned in the country in March under an "extremism" law.

Facebook and Instagram were banned in Russia after a court labeled parent company Meta as "extremist" amid a wider crackdown by Putin on independent news outlets and Western social media companies.

Sobchak "takes actions to attract users to a social network recognized as extremist in Russia," the letter reportedly said.

In September, the first criminal case for using Instagram was opened in Russia. A 19-year-old beauty influencer, Veronika Loginova, faces six years in prison on charges of participating in the activities of an extremist organization.

Russian digital rights nonprofit Roskomsvoboda said that Loginova was the first person in Russia to be prosecuted for using Instagram since it was banned.

Russia cracked down on Meta after Instagram permitted posts urging violence against Putin and Russian troops in Ukraine.

Meta global affairs president Nick Clegg said at the time that the company was "now narrowing the focus to make it explicitly clear in the guidance that it is never to be interpreted as condoning violence against Russians in general."

Newsweek has contacted Russia's foreign ministry for comment.