Oleg Erovinkin

Oleg Alexandrovich Erovinkin (; 1955 – 26 December 2016) was a Russian intelligence officer. He was a general in both the KGB and FSB.

Early life and education

Erovinkin was born 1955. He began serving with the KGB in 1976 and graduated from the Dzerzhynsky Higher School of the KGB in 1980. Erovinkin was appointed chief of staff for Rosneft by Vladimir Putin in May 2008.

Death and investigation

On 26 December 2016, Erovinkin was found dead in the back of his car in Moscow. He was 61 years old.

Because of his similarity to dossier Source B, who was "a former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin", Glenn Simpson has also said he knows of no sources who have been harmed physically. Sources have noted that Erovinkin was a key liaison between Sechin and Putin, serving as chief of staff at Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft, the same company associated with dossier allegations about Carter Page and the lifting of sanctions by Trump. Those allegations came from a source. Erovinkin was "Sechin's closest associate", and to Putin, who was looking for leakers, he "was at least a person of interest".

According to Christo Grozev, a journalist at Risk Management Lab, a think tank based in Bulgaria, the circumstances of Erovinkin's death were "mysterious". Grozev suspected Erovinkin helped Steele compile the dossier on Trump and suggests the hypothesis that the death may have been part of a cover-up by the Russian government. Experts expressed skepticism about the theory: "As a rule, people like Gen Yerovinkin don't tend to die in airport thriller murders," said Mark Galeotti, an expert on the Russian security services.