It has happened: rumors that Ksenia Sobchak was going to stand as a candidate in the 2018 presidential elections have been confirmed. The plans of the 35-year-old TV presenter led to an immediate reaction from society. For example, a number of experts expressed the opinion that Sobchak in this regard turned out to be a “convenient oppositionist”, having coordinated her nomination with the Kremlin, which, in turn, could lead to a high turnout in the upcoming elections.

Writing for a Better Audience

Ksenia Sobchak announced her intentions by sending a letter with the corresponding content to the editors of Vedomosti, whose readers she considers “the best audience in the country.” “Over the five years that have passed since the protest wave of 2012, my political views have finally formed, and I am ready to declare them and defend them at any, the highest level,” Sobchak states in the first paragraph of his message. “I am a candidate “against everyone”” - Sobchak positions himself with this slogan.

In a detailed letter, the TV presenter talks about the main points of her program, which experts have already designated as right-wing liberal. For example, Sobchak talks about the abolition of bans on the manifestation of political will and initiative, the distribution of funds in favor of the regions, the privatization of large state corporations, the development of private business, judicial and educational reforms, and so on.

The TV presenter will talk about how the campaign for collecting signatures and organizing the election headquarters will take place during a press conference scheduled for October 24, as Ksenia Chudinova, spokeswoman for Sobchak’s election campaign, said in a conversation with RBC.

The Kremlin's reaction

As for that very “coordination with the Kremlin and President Putin,” there was none. At least that’s what presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov says. His words, one way or another, are confirmed by Sobchak herself, who on the air of Dozhd said that she had already informed the head of state that she would take part in the elections. “Putin said that everyone has the right to make decisions and should be responsible for them,” she said, noting that Putin did not seem pleased with what she heard.

The Kremlin official also noted that there are no obstacles to Sobchak becoming a presidential candidate, since she is “a citizen of the Russian Federation who, in accordance with the Constitution, can run for president of the country.” Peskov also noted that the TV presenter is a versatile and talented person in many areas, but in politics, which is different from journalism and show business, she will have to “gain experience from scratch.”

Zhirinovsky, Khakamada and Zyuganov

In political circles, Sobchak’s plans were received without enthusiasm. Thus, Vladimir Zhirinovsky made a statement that this step could be dangerous, since Russia should be ruled by a marshal, “but a sergeant is going to the polls.” “A dummy candidate to put down other candidates,” says the leader of the LDPR.

Another politician, Irina Khakamada, in a conversation with RIA Novosti, said that Ksenia Sobchak’s participation in the campaign resembles a provocative farce, even though she can attract a large number of young people to participate in the elections. In general, Khakamada is “normal” about these plans, and there is no need to worry about this, since no one hopes that the TV presenter will be president. “If she were an experienced politician, this would be a different story...” summed up the publicist and business consultant.

Ksenia Sobchak herself positions herself as an opposition candidate to the Kremlin. However, Russia's notional "liberal opposition" is unhappy with her decision to run. And the conventionally oppositional Russian media were very critical of her step.

It is also difficult to believe Sobchak because she has denied several times that she is going to run for president. “Rumors about my nomination are a provocation and another attempt to discredit,” she said at the end of September.

Who is Sobchak

Socialite, journalist-TV presenter and daughter of Putin's godfather - all this is about Ksenia Sobchak. She is an ambiguous personality, and accordingly, her step caused mixed reactions.

Some people know her better as the host of the reality show "Dom-2", while others remember her for her ironic and witty interviews on the Dozhd TV channel. She characterized the annexation of Crimea as a “brilliantly executed political combination” and as “hemorrhoids for the next hundred years.”

She angered many Ukrainians with her appeal to Poroshenko, in which she sharply criticized his decision to block Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki and Yandex. However, many remember her compliments to the Ukrainians during the Euromaidan, in particular, the words that “in terms of civic consciousness, you are our older brother.” Her joint report with journalist Anton Krasovsky was published by the website Snob.ru.

Ksenia Sobchak in February 2014 in the premises of the Kyiv City State Administration. Photo: Vladimir Shuvaev

In 2016, she said that Ukraine is much more successful than Russia in terms of political prospects and is going through a process of “painful recovery.” Even when Avakov splashes water on Saakashvili, this is a sign that an ugly but political struggle is going on. At the same time, Sobchak has repeatedly said that she opposes revolutions. Because, according to her, Putin is better than chaos.

Candidate "against everyone"

Ksenia Sobchak announced her decision to run for president in a letter published on October 18 on the website of the Vedomosti newspaper. The address, as Meduza sarcastically noted, is replete with spelling errors.

Sobchak positions himself as a candidate “against everyone.” There is no such column in Russian ballots and she believes that this is bad. “Ksenia Sobchak in your ballot is the “Against all” column. You get a legal and peaceful opportunity to say: “Enough! Enough!" she writes.

She also promised to withdraw her candidacy if Alexei Navalny was allowed to participate in the elections. The Russian authorities are blocking the latter from being nominated until at least 2028 due to his criminal record. However, Navalny himself criticized Sobchak’s decision. Even before she officially announced her decision, he called her a “caricatured liberal candidate” who is wanted by the oligarchs or the Kremlin.

Sobchak herself has already stated that she discussed her participation in the elections with Putin, and he allegedly did not look happy. She also denies that she coordinated her decision with the Russian presidential administration. But the Russian media don't believe her. “Sobchak’s initiative could not have been agreed upon with the Kremlin,” RBC wrote based on the results of a survey of experts.

If the Russian authorities are afraid of Navalny, then Sobchak certainly cannot pose a threat to Putin. A Levada Center poll shows that she is one of the five politicians whom Russians do not trust. And in general, 55% of Russians are not ready to see a woman as president.

However, Sobchak can play the role of an “alternative” in the eyes of Western observers. They say that not only the traditional Putin, Zhirinovsky and Zyuganov are taking part in the elections, but also a young, promising opposition-minded journalist.

Ksenia Sobchak announced that she will take part in the Russian presidential elections next spring. “Blonde in Chocolate” called herself an “Against Everyone” candidate and expressed her determination to withdraw her candidacy in favor of Navalny if he is allowed to participate in the elections. However, Ella Pamfilova, as if by agreement with our heroine, has already stated that the 41-year-old chairman of the Progress Party cannot be registered as a candidate due to a criminal record and will easily be able to take part in the presidential elections after 2028.

"Cartoon Candidate"

Back in September, information leaked to the press about Ksenia Sobchak’s possible participation in the presidential elections with the approval of the presidential administration. However, the person involved in the rumors herself dubbed these data an attempt to discredit her. At the same time, she did not announce her refusal to run for office. Then Alexei Navalny, who had previously, as if nothing had happened, participated with her in various opposition rallies, hastened to expose these rumors to unprecedented criticism.

The most famous political blogger called Sobchak Jr. a caricature of a liberal candidate and a “spoiler” with the cannibalistic views of a democrat of the early nineties. The former participant in the sensational project “Dom-2” did not keep her waiting and on Instagram accused the most effective opposition leader of leaderism, hypocrisy, calls for uncoordinated actions and a split in the opposition. At the same time, however, she cunningly suggested “joining efforts.”

Rumors about the participation of the 35-year-old daughter of former boss Vladimir Putin in the presidential race ceased to be such after the publication on October 18 in the Vedomosti newspaper of a unique program of a candidate for the first post in the state.

The TV personality explained her decision by her desire to return the “forbidden” column “Against all” to the ballot papers. “Are you against the fact that for many years only Zyuganov, Yavlinsky, Putin and their faceless backups and deputies are on the list? Do you want to show your active position, but your candidate is not allowed to participate in the elections? Don't have your own candidate? Tag Sobchak. You don't elect her for president. You simply have a legal and peaceful opportunity to say: “Enough! Got it!” wrote the host of the program named after herself “Sobchak Live.”

The new wife of the famous actor Maxim Vitorgan finds it a wrong decision to boycott the presidential campaign due to the refusal to register “prominent opposition figures and, of course, first of all Alexei Navalny” as candidates.

In the unusual role of a presidential candidate, she plans to talk about how bad things are in the Vast and that the “system” needs to be changed. Also, the host of the radio program “Barabaka and the Gray Wolf” intends to demand “the release of all political prisoners” and the registration of Alexei Navalny as a candidate in the presidential elections.

According to media data, Ksenia Sobchak’s consultants during the election campaign will be the well-known political strategist Vitaly Shklyarov, as well as the co-owner of the Vedomosti newspaper, who was recently deprived of Russian citizenship, Demyan Kudryavtsev. By the way, Mr. Shklyarov somehow advised Democratic senator and “non-practicing Jew” Bernie Sanders in the US presidential elections, although he refused to participate in the presidential race at the primaries stage.

It is curious that the star of glamorous domestic journalism informed President Putin about her nomination in advance during an interview for the filming of a documentary about her father Anatoly Sobchak. In response, the administration of the head of state supported this candidacy and spoke about the “full constitutionality” of her self-nomination.

According to an October poll by the Levada Center, in the upcoming elections, 64% of the plebiscite votes should go to the current leader of Russia since the end of 1999. According to sociologists, the Kremlin is currently concerned not with Vladimir Putin's victory, but with the turnout for the elections. The fact is that turnout in the State Duma elections in 2016 and in the September regional elections demonstrated a noticeable decline in Russians’ interest in this “sacred duty of citizens.”

Let us remind you that Sobchak is not the first woman to seek the highest government position. In the elections in 2000, Ella Pamfilova nominated her candidacy, and in 2004, Irina Khakamada.

President Sobchak through the eyes of politicians

“I think that if she has any views on politics, she will have to gain experience from scratch. Politics is different from journalism and show business; it is a completely different substance. Politics presupposes the expression of the will of the people. If Ksyusha is able to respond to this expression of the will of the people, she will have a chance in politics,” press secretary of the head of state Dmitry Peskov told the Dozhd TV channel. It is interesting that his comment came out a few minutes before the Vedomosti newspaper published Sobchak’s “pre-election” letter, in which she first announced her “presidential ambitions.”

Of course, Russia's long-living political leader, the leader of the LDPR, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, did not stand aside. “Of course, you can run for office, but it’s clear that you must have a certain set of qualities, you must have some kind of historical era behind you... You need to work in different jobs, you need to be in the elections. What elections was she in? No one has ever voted for her,” said a participant in all presidential elections since 1991 at the 19th World Festival of Youth and Students in Sochi.

His permanent opponent and leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation greeted the news about Sobchak with a call not to turn the election campaign into a laughing stock and tragicomedy (RIA Novosti). He said that in his new book, “The Countdown Has Started,” he quotes the statements of “the most evil Russophobes,” and among them is “Ksyusha, who called Russia and its people genetic scum.” In this connection, the famous communist believes, with such an assessment of the country and its citizens, it is wrong to nominate oneself for such an important post: “this is impossible even in Burkina Faso.”

The founder of Open Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, wrote on Twitter that “there is something” in Sobchak’s nomination. “She can really help people understand the essence of “elections without choice,” the ex-oligarch believes.

Presidential candidate in the 2004 elections, Irina Khakamada, in an interview with Dozhd, called the idea of ​​nominating Ksenia Sobchak “interesting, a joke.” The politician believes that its result can demonstrate to the Kremlin that people are “fed up”, and the authorities will understand that they need to “either change, or they will be swept away.”

In turn, Leonid Gozman on “Echo of Moscow” expressed suspicion that against the backdrop of Sobchak, everyone except Putin will look like “clowns and/or old men who have fallen into insanity,” and the main candidate will be completely legally “on horseback.”

There has been no reaction from Alexei Navalny yet.

“Beer is better than Sobchak”

The declaration of Ksenia Sobchak's intention to participate in the presidential race caused a storm of all kinds of assessments and comments from political scientists on the most popular social network.

For example, the famous political consultant Konstantin Kalachev wrote the following on Facebook: “Sobchak says that this is for her - against everyone. But in 1995, I also said that for the party of beer lovers it was “against everyone.” Got less than one percent. But beer is better than Sobchak.”

“There is only one mystery in Sobchak’s nomination: how was Putin persuaded to do this?” asks Kalachev.

“The presidential administration could not help but understand that Sobchak would leak the story on Channel One,” political analyst Abbas Gallyamov wrote on his FB page. – Since the Kremlin-controlled First Channel is reporting Sobchak’s participation in the upcoming elections, this leaves no doubt that the authorities, in principle, are not against her participation in the elections. At least for the “suspicious” opposition voter, the Kremlin’s friendly attitude will become obvious.”

According to Gallyamov, this is also a serious argument in support of Navalny’s position. “By disregarding the rules of camouflage, the authorities thereby set priorities,” the political scientist believes. “What a liberal voter thinks is not so important for them compared to what a mass voter, a mass voter, will think after learning about Sobchak’s nomination.”

In turn, political scientist Evgeny Minchenko noted that “if Vitaly Shklyarov is involved in Sobchak’s company, then this is not bad for her.” “The head of the campaign of American Democrat Bernie Sanders praised Vitaly,” Minchenko writes on Facebook. “Well, Shklyarov’s participation will be an additional argument in favor of the fact that Ksenia is not a Kremlin project.”

Ksenia Sobchak as a presidential candidate is not funny, convinces Evgeniy Minchenko: “for a new girl” you can get up to 10 percent with a competent campaign and good funding.”

Another political analyst Andrei Okara wrote on the most influential social network today that “Sobchak’s participation in the presidential race legitimizes the elections, relieves tension along the Putin-Navalny line, creates maximum comfort for the current president, reduces the likelihood of the election campaign moving from an inertial format to a mobilization and almost rules out catastrophic.”

Political scientist Okara thinks that “with his participation, Sobchak will save the legitimacy of the re-election of his seemingly godfather and that this will be a completely competitive struggle with the most white-tape opposition.” The expert also added that “apparently her own big show will soon appear on one of the federal television channels.”

Political scientist Valery Solovey believes in Sobchak’s success. On his personal Facebook page, he wrote: “Ksenia Sobchak can perform unexpectedly successfully in the presidential elections,” adding: “provided that Alexei Navalny and a well-structured company are absent from the elections.”

I would like to immediately propose a small but important amendment. The word “Art” in the above title is deeply inappropriate. The project of promoting a 35-year-old outrageous show business figure to the top leader of the second nuclear power in the world has absolutely nothing to do with art. But he has the most direct relation to high politics. And we are not talking about “politics” in the form of small-town games in the opposition “sandbox,” but about quite serious politics. The slogan “Ksyusha for President!” is deeply absurd at first glance. fits equally perfectly into the plans of the Kremlin and into the expectations of Ksenia Anatolyevna herself.

I would like to immediately reassure those overly nervous citizens who, under the influence of Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election last year, cannot banish from the depths of their consciousness the idea that the unthinkable could happen in Russia. Can not. There will never be President Ksenia Sobchak in Russia under any circumstances. This is well understood by all rational thinking people, among whom I include Ksenia Anatolyevna herself without any discounts. Yes Yes exactly. Ksenia Sobchak is not at all a “painted doll”, as some ill-wishers think of her. Ksenia Sobchak is quite a mature, experienced and subtle political player who understands perfectly well what exactly is required of her and exactly what role she has to play.

“The main thing is not victory, but participation” - perhaps I do not have a true sports spirit in me, but I have always considered this famous saying of the founder of the modern Olympic movement, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, as a consolation for losers, those who took part, but were left with nothing. But for Russian presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak in the 2018 elections, these words are a real guide to action. As I said above, no one expects victory from Ksenia Anatolyevna. But the Kremlin expects her to participate in the election campaign - participation not for form, but genuine, fierce, without discounts or sentimentality, participation in the style of “Sobchak in all his glory.”

The presence of such a desire in the Kremlin may seem strange. Usually, in the presidential elections of the Russian Federation, Putin’s sparring partners are “exceptionally dangerous competitors” like the eternal Gennady Andreevich Zyuganov or the former security guard Zhirinovsky (there was such a presidential candidate Oleg Malyshkin in the 2004 elections, in case anyone has forgotten). But those around Putin are well aware that in the 2018 elections such a familiar political move – or, to put it more precisely, such a habitual lack of a political move – will not work. It is important for the Kremlin that Putin not only wins the elections, but that “simply winning” the elections is already assured. It is important for the Kremlin that Putin wins clearly and convincingly.

And this, in the current political circumstances, requires, in turn, two conditions. Condition A: Putin needs a bright and convincing opponent from that Russian political camp that can conditionally and for lack of a better term be called liberal. Condition B: the name of this “bright and convincing opponent” should not sound like “Navalny”. Of course, one should not conclude from this that if Navalny had been allowed to participate in the elections, he would have had a real chance of defeating Putin. Candidate Navalny would undoubtedly get more votes than candidate Sobchak will get. But the final result of the elections would not have changed. Only the place of Alexei Navalny in Russian politics would change. From a person on probation, as he officially is now, Navalny would turn into a figure who would force the Kremlin to dance to its tune.

The essence of the current strategy of the authorities in relation to Alexei Navalny is very simple: they are trying to drive him back into the environment of the political fringes. Navalny will be able to escape from this trap only if he receives the right to become an official presidential candidate. But the theoretical possibility of granting him such a right would mean a complete loss of face for the authorities. Navalny is a suspended sentence and this, according to the letter of the law, deprives him of the right to run for office. Navalny sees his task as scaring the authorities to death and forcing them to make an exception for him. However, the authorities are not going to be afraid. She is going to neutralize Navalny’s strategy by selecting for Putin both a completely comfortable and completely convincing competitor from the liberal camp. A suitable candidate for the role of such a competitor is Ksenia Sobchak.

I am very far from the world of glamor and social gatherings, and I am very happy about it. I can judge Ksenia Sobchak only from the outside - from the position of a person who has never communicated with her personally in his life. But these are the conclusions I have long come to regarding her. Ksenia Sobchak has a lot of qualities that are not attractive in my eyes. For example, I was always amazed by her incomprehensible readiness to get into other people’s personal lives and throw around peremptory and even offensive judgments. But at the same time, Ksenia Sobchak is a brilliant polemicist, a person who really knows a lot about politics and history, a person who is not afraid to touch on topics that others would not even take a shot at. Ksenia Sobchak is anyone, but not a dummy.

This combination of negative and positive qualities - a “bouquet” of undoubted talent and “toxicity” in the eyes of a significant part of society - makes Sobchak a very convenient sparring partner for Putin. How can Ksenia Anatolyevna herself benefit from this role? The answer lies on the surface. Participation in the presidential elections will further increase the “capitalization” of Ksenia Sobchak as a socially significant figure and show business figure. Of course, in the eyes of Navalny and his supporters, she will turn (or has already turned) into a traitor - see the emotional speech of London exile Evgeny Chichvarkin with sending Ksenia Antolyevna to places where ordinary polite people do not send. But I suspect that Ksenia Sobchak, who is not at all prone to reflection, will somehow survive this. Political show business requires sacrifices.