Kseniya Sobchak

Kseniya Sobchak was born in 1981 in Saint Petersburg

Sobchak was born in 1981 in Leningrad, today Saint Petersburg. She is the younger daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, the first democratically elected mayor of Saint Petersburg, and Senator Lyudmila Narusova. Her maternal grandfather was Jewish, and she has said her family faced antisemitism.

As a child she studied at the ballet school of the Mariinsky Theatre and at the Hermitage Museum art school. In 1998 she began studying international relations at Saint Petersburg State University. In 2001 she moved to Moscow and enrolled at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

She became known in 2004 as a host of the reality show Dom-2, which she left in 2012. She hosted other shows, including Sobchak Live on TV Rain, acted in several comedies, and recorded a song with the rapper Timati in 2007. From 2015 to 2018 she was editor-in-chief of L'Officiel Russia.

After the 2011 Duma elections she joined the street protests, and her Moscow apartment was searched in 2012. In 2017 she announced her run for president in the 2018 election as the Civic Initiative candidate. From 2020 to 2021 she co-hosted Dok-Tok on Channel One.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, reports said she left for Israel and received Israeli citizenship, but she soon returned to Russia. She now runs her own media company, Ostorozhno Media.