A military court in Moscow has arrested FSB officer Evgeny Sosonkin, who was named in an October 2024 investigation by The Insider into Russian intelligence activity in Africa. The 235th Garrison Military Court granted the request to arrest the 37-year-old officer on June 3, according to a report by independent exiled Russian outlet Mediazona.
The article of Russia’s Criminal Code under which Sosonkin is being prosecuted has not been publicly disclosed, and the court’s press service has declined to clarify the charge. Sosonkin’s phone is unavailable, his wife has deleted her social media accounts, and she did not respond to Mediazona’s question about her husband’s arrest.
Sosonkin appeared in The Insider’s investigation into how Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency and the Federal Security Service (FSB) have used private companies in their overseas work. One of these entities was the Yekaterinburg-based Bureau Legint, which had an annual budget of 100 million rubles ($1.36 million) and was founded by Viktor Boyarkin, a former GRU naval intelligence officer, together with his wife. Sosonkin was listed on the company’s website as its “director of international relations.”
Data obtained by The Insider also showed that Sosonkin served as executive director of the Business Advisory Council on Libya, an entity that a source described as having been created “at the FSB’s insistent request” due to the fact that the agency urgently needed to expand its resident network in the Middle East as a counterweight to Turkish intelligence.
Bureau Legint was involved in projects in Cuba and Mexico, while its affiliated organization — the Association for Economic Cooperation with African States (AECAS) — operated in Madagascar, Congo, Senegal, and Mali. In Africa, the groups held propaganda events, including with Wagner Group mercenaries and the Russkiy Mir Foundation, a Kremlin-backed organization used to promote Russian language, culture, and influence abroad.
The phone number listed on Bureau Legint’s website is registered to Anastasia Samarkina, a relative of Boyarkin’s wife. A woman who answered the number when contacted by Mediazona said the journalist had the wrong number.
Sosonkin’s place of service is Military Unit 26047. It belongs to the FSB’s Fifth Service, which oversees “international cooperation.”
