Raid boosts Sobchak's activist credentials If most Russians thought the life of Ksenia Sobchak, the glamorous socialite and it-girl, read something like a Hollywood script, they probably did not expect it to be this one. In the early hours of June 11, a team of policemen stormed into Ms Sobchak's apartment. There, they encountered a half-naked Ms Sobchak (she thought she was opening the door for the cleaning lady), and a companion: Moscow opposition leader Ilya Yashin. Over the course of six hours, the armed men turned over the apartment, ultimately finding envelopes filled with more than €1m in cash (Ms Sobchak says she does not trust banks), and ordering the starlet to come in for questioning the next day. IN World It was a strange twist of fate for a woman who once seemed protected by a higher power. Ms Sobchak's late father was Vladimir Putin's mentor in St Petersburg in the 1990s, and she has long been viewed as close to the Kremlin - so much so that she was booed on the stage of a December opposition rally. What the raid confirmed was stranger still. Over the course of six short months, Ms Sobchak has managed to shed her party girl image and become, in the police's as well as the media's eyes, one of the main leaders of the Moscow opposition movement. In the leadership circle, Ms Sobchak joins an eclectic group of activists who, six months into the protest movement, have managed to more or less work together and establish a common platform despite clashes in politics and personalities. On one side of the spectrum is Sergei Udaltsov, a radical leftist with a skeletal frame and shaved head who is quick to go on hunger strikes and issue calls to storm the Kremlin. On the other is Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and veteran of the opposition movement in his fifties. Rounding out the middle is Alexei Navalny, the popular anti-corruption blogger and nationalist; Mr Yashin, a baby-faced liberal democrat who has been linked to romantically to Ms Sobchak in recent months; and Ms Sobchak herself. The group does not always get along. In an audio recording posted on a Kremlin-friendly news site in December Mr Nemtsov was heard referring to Yevgenia Chirikova, another leader, as "either a bitch, or an idiot," while Ms Sobchak stresses she has little to nothing in common with Mr Udaltsov. Nevertheless, there is pressure for a show of unity, especially in the wake of the March presidential election which briefly appeared to take the air out of the Moscow protest movement after Mr Putin sailed to victory. "I've always talked about the need to form a united team," Ms Sobchak told the Financial Times in an interview. Unfortunately this doesn't always work out because of the ambitions of the different leaders. But I always strive towards this, and believe it is the only way to exit from the current [political] situation. Ms Sobchak is significantly less radical than some of her peers. She dismisses protest slogans such as "Putin resign!" as unrealistic. "I have always believed politics to be the art of the possible," she says. The opposition should instead be focusing on concrete goals such as supporting democratic opposition candidates in upcoming regional elections as well as demanding new Moscow duma elections and an early vote for the capitol's mayor. Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow's current mayor, was appointed in 2010 after his predecessor was fired, and fresh elections are not scheduled until 2015. This is the positive narrative that in my opinion can unite the opposition leaders today. To reach such big goals you need to unite. All other projects will remain projects," she says. What may end up uniting both the various leaders and their followers are the actions taken by the authorities on Ms Sobchak and the others. On Friday the socialite was called in for a second day of questioning, as were Mr Yashin and Mr Nemtsov, whose apartments were also searched earlier in the week. Once inside Ms Sobchak, an avid Twitter user, continued posting to the social networking site, snapping a picture of a bust of Lenin that was placed prominently in the room. "Lenin on the shelf, bible on the table, Sobchak on the chair," she wrote in an accompanying tweet. Ms Sobchak may not be a rallying figure for the nation. But the apartment raids, along with the increase in fines for protest violations and the use of riot police at a May demonstration, have worked to the leaders" advantage, analysts say, noting the numbers at the most recent rally on Tuesday. "The authorities, by sending in batons, by sending in riot police, are crystallising the protest themselves and making it politically more organised," Maxim Shevchenko, a pro-Kremlin TV personality, unexpectedly told radio station Ekho Moskvy last month. Ms Sobchak agrees. The apartment raid, she says, was "absolutely illegal, an outrage. And people always react to unfairness.