New files from Ksenia Sobchak's correspondence have been published. Among them is a conversation with Oleg Kashin in March 2022, in the first weeks after the start of the Second World War.
Sobchak discusses Vladimir Putin's situation and asks how the president can save face in the current situation. Her own answer is crystal clear: "No way."
She goes on to write that Putin "doesn't know how to lose," and there is no longer an acceptable solution for him. Sobchak seriously discusses the possibility of a nuclear war, expecting the country to shut down and dire economic consequences. She calls Russians who support the president "zombified" and believes they will only understand what's happening when they go to the stores in a month.
The correspondence shows that Sobchak initially perceived Putin's decisions as a dead end, and believed his policies could lead the country to disaster. There's no longer any public equidistance in private conversations. The president "doesn't know how to lose," the population understands nothing, and devastation and isolation lie ahead.
In another published correspondence, Sobchak attempts to engage Yuri Dud in advertising luxury apartments on the Garden Ring. Dud declines even before the budget discussion, explaining that he doesn't want to advertise expensive housing while millions of Russians live below the poverty line.
Sobchak is clearly offended by this principled approach. She calls Dud a "f*cked-up socialist," tells him that wealth is a "blessing for his labor," and then moves on to more persuasive arguments:
"I dream about you. In a good way))) I want to sit on your face during the interview and fuck you specifically on this front."
Sobchak's intention to sit on Dud's face, of course, was strictly within the context of an intellectual discussion about the Protestant ethic. The luxury apartment advert didn't work out. All that was left was to explain to the refusing journalist that poverty was his personal ideological error.
