Russian fashion editor, socialite, and opposition campaigner Kseniya Sobchak may have fled the country after her name reportedly came up on a “hit list” of dissident politicians.  The glamorous gadfly was friends with both slain opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and President Vladimir Putin.

Kseniya Sobchak has known Vladimir Putin since she was a small child, and he was deputy to her father – the late Anatoly Sobchak, liberal mayor of Saint Petersburg.  The Russian president’s former law professor gave him his first gig in politics.  The families were so close that some believe Kseniya is Putin’s goddaughter.  But Sobchak stayed in the Liberal camp as Putin grew more and more conservative and nationalistic.

The 33-year old Sobchak reportedly told friends at a party last week that she was “going to leave Russia for a while”.  She later tweeted that the story was somewhat overstated, and attributed it to “red wine”.  But she didn’t deny it.

Boris Nemtsov was at the top of the list, and he was brazenly shot and killed on 27 February on a bridge near the Kremlin.  Other prominent dissidents on the list include Alexei Navalny and Max Khodorkovsky. 

Sobchak doesn’t believe that Putin directly ordered the hit on Nemtsov, but he unleashed the nationalist forces that made it possible.

“Actually it would be in some way less worrying if Putin had ordered Nemtsov's killing,” Sobchak said.

“There is no Putin who gave a command to kill.  But there is a Putin who has built a hellish Terminator and he has lost control of it, she warned, “There is no one controlling the process any more – there is chaotic hatred.  Hatred that is fuelled every day by the federal mass media.”