Public-private espionage. How the GRU and FSB recruited a private company from Yekaterinburg to do their work around the world

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A GRU outfit

Since 2018, Russia has started to build up its presence in Africa, gradually squeezing out the influence of the U.S., France, and other Western powers. Key roles were assigned to the GRU’s Fourth Directorate, which oversees Africa and Israel, and the African Division of the FSB's Fifth Service. Both intelligence agencies dusted off Moscow’s long-abandoned Soviet GRU and KGB agent networks and began actively recruiting new assets among the continent’s politicians, military officers, and journalists.

To this end, they created several foreign trade associations with African countries and established a dozen consulting firms involved in a wide range of activities. One such entity was Bureau Legint, with an annual budget of roughly $1 million. Legint was co-founded by former GRU naval intelligence officer Viktor Boyarkin and his wife, Tatiana, who had worked as an accountant at the GRU headquarters at 76b Khoroshevskoe Highway (Military Base 45807).

Boyarkin, a graduate of the GRU Military Diplomatic Academy, has quite a past: in 1986, he took part in the evacuation of Soviet military personnel and diplomatic staff from Yemen — at the time, disputes between Moscow's local proxies were building up to a civil war that ultimately claimed 10,000 lives. After Yemen, Boyarkin was assigned as an assistant military attaché to the Russian embassies in the United States and Mexico, where he spied until 2003. He later took up a role in the management of the Almaz-Antey defense corporation, where he was involved in sales of small and medium-sized warships to Africa.

In 2005, Boyarkin headed the security service of Oleg Deripaska, the head of aluminum giant RUSAL, while also carrying out his special missions in Africa. One such assignment involved identifying the instigators of labor strikes at the oligarch's bauxite plant in Guinea. An internal RUSAL document circulating on the web instructs Boyarkin and Alexander Dedkovsky — the former head of the United Russia support fund in Yekaterinburg — to work on removing government ministers and prefects in Guinea who supported the strikers and replacing them with loyal officials.

In 2006, when Deripaska owned an aluminum smelter in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, Boyarkin instructed a pro-Kremlin party in the country to ensure that its supporters voted correctly in an upcoming independence referendum. Reportedly, the GRU officer even delivered suitcases full of money, although he himself denies it. However, these details surfaced in 2018, when Boyarkin, on Deripaska's behalf, attempted to extract a debt from Donald Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was advising the very same “opposition” party in Montenegro.

“He owed us a lot of money and suggested ways he could pay it back,” Boyarkin told the press. Eventually, Manafort was put in the dock, and the names of Deripaska and Boyarkin stayed on the front pages of the American media for quite some time after the U.S. Department of the Treasury placed both of them on its sanctions lists.

The office of special counsel Robert Mueller, who was investigating Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election, offered Boyarkin a meeting, but he declined it rudely. Today, Boyarkin sits on Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy — along with pro-Kremlin political scientist Sergei Karaganov, who recently proposed pre-emptive nuclear strikes on Europe. But Boyarkin, for his part, mainly sticks to publishing advice to the Kremlin on how to counter Western sanctions.

His years in military intelligence taught Boyarkin to keep a low profile, and the U.S. sanctions only increased his reluctance to be seen at public events. As a result, he entrusted all of Legint’s public activities to his wife's distant relative, Anastasia Samarkina, whom he appointed as the firm’s CEO.

While studying at the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Samarkina became the youngest member of the public Youth Chamber of the Yekaterinburg City Duma and said, in an interview with Cosmopolitan, that in 10 years she would be “at the very least, the president's wife.”

Samarkina has not yet become First Lady, but foreign ambassadors do receive her in their residences. She presides at international forums, participates in negotiations, and signs memorandums of cooperation with major Russian state corporations such as Novatek, Zarubezhneft, and RUSAL.

During her visit to Russian oil giant Rosneft’s branch in Cuba, Samarkina received thanks from the GRU’s residency curator in Latin America, Dmitry Bondarenko, who said: “Looking back on the results of our fruitful cooperation, I have the honor to express my gratitude to the management and staff of Bureau Legint for their efficient assistance in promoting our interests in the Latin American region.”

Legint also left a trace in Mexico, where in 2019 Samarkina met with Cora Pinedo, President of the Asia-Pacific-Africa Foreign Relations Commission of the Senate.

That same year, Ms Pinedo flew to Moscow and was welcomed at the airport by Farit Ganiev, a member of the State Duma Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption, while her further care was entrusted to conservative MP Pyotr Tolstoy.

Anastasia Samarkina initially agreed to answer The Insider's questions, but she texted back the next day to decline the opportunity: “Since the Russian Prosecutor General's Office has recognized The Insider (a foreign agent) as an undesirable organization, believing that your activity ‘poses a threat to the foundations of the constitutional order and security,’ further communication appears to be illegal and therefore impossible.”

A cosmonaut, diplomats' wives, and the “Russian world”

In addition to Bureau Legint, Boyarkin established the Association for Economic Cooperation with African States (AECAS). Its spokesman is Putin's former special envoy for the Middle East, Alexander Saltanov.

The number of AECAS employees is not disclosed, but the position of managing director is occupied by the holder of Officer's ID AF 91*** Vladimir Kurchenko, who formerly served in the Main Artillery Department of Russia’s Ministry of Defense (Military Unit 64176) and the chair of the director of economic programs belongs to Ukrainian national Andriy Albeshchenko. Albeshchenko used to work at the Russian-German Commercial Bank until the Bank of Russia revoked the entity’s license over its unreliable reporting data.

AECAS has its representatives in Madagascar and Congo, and last November, the association launched a joint program with the Russian World Foundation entitled “Russia-Africa: The Power of Friendship Through Years and Distances.” The first stage took place in Senegal and Mali and featured Russian cosmonaut Sergei Kud-Sverchkov, whose role was to convince local students of the benefits of friendship with Russia.

The Russian World website mentions that the cosmonaut also addressed Wagner mercenaries in Mali, where they acted in support of the local military junta. Notably, the website refers to them as “Russian soldiers.” Similar advocacy efforts involving Kud-Sverchkov are planned for Tunisia, Morocco, Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Côte d'Ivoire, and Zambia, with Russia’s Presidential Grants Foundation listed as the primary sponsor.

In Moscow, however, AECAS operates in the best traditions of the Soviet KGB — through embassies. For one, the association offers free tours for the wives of African diplomats and uses them to establish crucial operational contacts. Over the past two years, the spouses of diplomats visited the Bolshoi Theater, the Museum of Cosmonautics, the Diamond Fund, and the Museum Estate in Tsaritsyno, among other sites.

Chekist Sosonkin

Another of Boyarkin's brainchildren is the Business Advisory Council on Libya (BACL). According to The Insider's source in Russia’s special services, BACL was created at the insistence of the FSB, which was in dire need of expanding its Middle Eastern network to counterbalance Turkish intelligence. Therefore, it is no coincidence that Evgeny Sosonkin, a career officer of the FSB’s Fifth Service (Military Unit 26047), was appointed executive director of the council.

Sosonkin graduated from the Faculty of Information Security at the FSB Academy and then worked as an expert on Syria at the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Central Asia, which is headed by Semyon Bagdasarov, a reserve colonel and well-known pro-Kremlin political scientist. Now, in his role as CEO of BACL, Sosonkin participates in various roundtables on the Middle East and laments Russia's loss of influence in Libya.

In July 2023, during the large-scale Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg, FSB Fifth Service officer Sosonkin met with officials from Senegal and Nigeria.

At the Summit, he was introduced as director for economic relations at Bureau Legint. This is further evidenced by a letter of thanks from Putin's aide Anton Kobyakov.

Presently, Victor Boyarkin has disappeared from the radar. Legint financial statements show that the firm incurred significant losses between 2021 and 2022, after which it stopped publishing financial statements altogether. The bureau had to close its Moscow office and move its registered address to Anastasia Samarkina's private apartment on Azina Street in Yekaterinburg.

Another entity that saw its assets plummet was the Voenkadry Agency, which had been created by Boyarkin and Dmitry Bondarenko, the GRU officer assigned to Rosneft's subsidiary in Cuba. Officially, the agency recruits military retirees to work as security guards for state corporations, including Russian oil and gas facilities in Venezuela, Syria, and Africa.

Two of The Insider's sources in Voenkadry reported that the culprit behind the financial losses was since-deceased “Putin's chef” and former Wagner PMC head Yevgeny Prigozhin: “Under the guise of friendship with the president, he violated all prior agreements and pushed his way into Africa. The funding that was set aside for us was redirected to Wagner.” The second interviewee expressed optimism: “Hopefully, now that Prigozhin has been eliminated, things will start looking up for us again.”

The Insider requested an interview from Viktor Boyarkin but had not received a response at the time of publication.