Kseniya Anatolyevna Sobchak (Russian: Ксе́ния Анато́льевна Собча́к), born November 5, 1981 in Leningrad, Soviet Union (present day Saint Petersburg, Russia), is the second daughter of the first democratically-elected mayor of Saint Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak. A celebrity widely known nationally as a presenter on the reality show "Dom-2" on the Russian channel TNT, she is sometimes described to international audiences as, by way of analogy, Russia's "It girl" and "Russia's Paris Hilton".[1]
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As a child she attended the ballet school attached to the Mariinsky Theatre and the Hermitage Museum art school. In 1998, Ksenia left the school attached to Herzen University, and enrolled at the Saint Petersburg State University (Department of International Relations). In 2001 she moved to Moscow and enrolled in the International Relations program at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. In 2002 she enrolled in a masters program at the department of politics at the same university.
Sobchak acted in the 2004 film Thieves and Prostitutes, a true story of her childhood.[2]
She is also known as a clothes designer and promoter of rubber boots. In June 2006 she created her first collection of such boots.
In 2004, Sobchak was identified as a candidate to become Russia's first indigenous Space Tourist, flying to the International Space Station aboard a Soyuz rocket. She may have undertaken some initial tests and cosmonaut training, but the project came to nothing.
She also acted against the newly produced law that prohibits sharing of private life of Russian celebrities without their permission.
NB: the model named Ksenia who featured on the cover of Pulp's This is Hardcore is not Kseniya Sobchak, but a different model who has worked with Pretty Polly and has featured in FHM (Pretty Polly Feature). The two have been confused on a number of occasions.
On 28 December, 2008, Sobchak was on an Aeroflot flight from Moscow to New York when she and other passengers determined that the pilot was drunk prior to take-off. Sobchak used her socialite status to call Aeroflot representatives and remove the pilot from the cockpit.[3]
Russia's Tatler magazine made the list of most desirable single women in the country. The list is based on women's fortune and their celebrity status. She is known across Russia as a socialite, TV host and presenter. Ksenia is Russia's No.1 'it girl', an analogue to Paris Hilton.[4]
Sobchak's father, Anatoly, helped Vladimir Putin launch his career in politics when he was Mayor of St. Petersburg. Putin then helped Anatoly flee Russia when he was wanted on corruption charges.[5] According to the Moscow News, "Putin’s reported affection for the Sobchak family is widely believed to give Ksenia Sobchak a protected status, which may also explain her boldness", such as her encounter in October 2011 with Vasily Yakemenko, the controversial leader of the pro-Kremlin Nashi youth movement, when she reprimanded him for eating at an expensive restaurant in Moscow and published video of the encounter on the internet.[5]