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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goddaughter is one of the celebrities shocking conservative Russia by attending a hot and now notorious party.
Ksenia Sobchak, a journalist, socialite, and former presidential candidate, is running to especially limit the damage after it turned out that she, too, was at the party “almost naked,” as she nicknamed her.
The daring party, which was priced at $11,000 a ticket, invited members of Russian celebrity circles and influencers to show up dressed in as little clothing as possible.
Rapper Vacio still wasn’t wearing anything: a pair of shoes and an elegantly placed sock, the Washington Post reported.
It set off backlash from conservative commentators and politicians, who accused partygoers of flouting Russia’s infamous anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda laws. Critics also scorned the optics of the lavish affair in contrast with the lives of ordinary Russians, especially those fighting on the front lines in Ukraine.
The typhoon had serious consequences for the participants.
Many have seen their brand deals and performances canceled, while Vacio was sentenced to 15 days in jail, The Guardian reported.
Meanwhile, the party’s organizer, influencer Anastasia Ivleeva, is facing a class-action lawsuit in which plaintiffs don’t have an easy time paying $11 million to a veterans’ charity, Russian media outlet MeduzaArray reported.
Since then, Ivleeva, like the celebrities involved, has posted a disturbing apology on social media.
Sobchak also reacted by offering a partial apology to protect Ivleeva.
According to a translation by the Washington Post, Sobchak posted a defiant message on his Telegram account the day after the party, when the backlash began, saying, “Where and when adults pass by with bare butts, that’s their non-public business. “
He said war and killings still happen somewhere in the world, adding that doesn’t mean other people can’t drink champagne.
The post was accompanied by a video of a woman seen dressed in a sheer, revealing black dress.
A few days later, the public outrage doesn’t seem to have subsided and Sobchak posted a video.
This time, he hinted that the crowd was more agitated than he expected to see at one of Ivleeva’s parties, with “a lot of bad taste. “
Allowing photographs of the party to be published in poor taste, he said.
“You have to carefully decide the right time, and this is not the right time,” he said, adding that he apologized “if anyone got angry about my appearance. “
She said not to scapegoat everyone there because of a “stupid accident,” according to Meduza’s translation.
The reaction to the party shows that almost nobody — not even a beloved celebrity — is immune to fierce backlash in conservative Russia. But there may be a reason Sobchak can afford not to grovel too hard in response to the furor.
His father, Anatoly Sobchak, a former mayor of St. Petersburg who died in 2000, is credited with bringing Putin onto the national political stage, earning him admiration. Since then, persistent rumors have warned that Putin is his godfather.
The connection, formal or not, may have given you a little more freedom.
“She has control to get out of this, and it was understood that Putin’s presidential administration was making sure she didn’t get into too much trouble,” Jade McGlynn, a Russia policy researcher, told Business Insider in a previous interview.
Putin praised Sobchak in 2017 when he announced his candidacy for the presidency, a move that slightly threatened his power. According to McGlynn, her position as a wealthy woman in the party probably made the progressive and pro-democracy movements seem unserious about her campaign.
Other political rivals have faced much harsher treatment, such as Alexei Navalny, who nearly died in a poisoning widely blamed on Russian security and is now in a penal colony in the Arctic.
A less female candidate was barred this week from running in the upcoming presidential election after officials said they discovered typos and other errors in her documents.
Sobchak has also been able to openly advocate for LGBTQ rights. But in 2022, he briefly fled to Lithuania after his business manager was arrested. This came a few months after he expressed fear over the invasion of Ukraine.
A spokesman for Sobchak did not respond to a request for comment.
Correction: December 28, 2023: A previous edit of this tale incorrectly described the video posted on Telegram via Ksenia Sobchak. The photographs appeared to show Sobchak.