Anton Panov, the 47-year-old Russian embassy employee in Nicosia who died by suicide, maintained extensive contacts with high-ranking Russian officials including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov before taking up his Cyprus posting, phone records have allegedly revealed.
The Russian investigative website The Insider obtained and published Panov’s phone records late on Wednesday afternoon, showing he contacted Lavrov and senior Foreign Ministry officials, intelligence operatives and pro-Russian political figures before his transfer to Cyprus.
Other websites report Panov transferred to the Russian embassy in Cyprus last autumn, though The Insider’s report does not specify the exact timing of his arrival.
Beyond Lavrov, Panov maintained contacts with Foreign Ministry leadership, the SVR intelligence service, politicians from the LDPR party founded by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and other pro-Russian actors, according to The Insider, which specialises in investigations and analysis.
Before coming to Cyprus, Panov contacted numerous high-level figures, according to the phone records. These included Lavrov’s adviser Bakhtier Khakimov, former deputy foreign ministers Mikhail Bogdanov and Galina Sulga, and Andrei Lisikov, head of the Currency-Financial Affairs Department where SVR and GRU officers typically conduct espionage under diplomatic cover, The Insider reported.
He also contacted Evgeny Stanislavov, now Russian ambassador to Hungary, diplomat Vasnetsov who served as ambassador to Moldova, and Andrei Lantsikov, reportedly an adviser at the Russian embassy in Uzbekistan.
Other contacts included former Russian senator Sergei Chekov from Crimea, who is wanted by Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, and “Sasha Sniper”—likely the nickname of Alexander Borisov from the United Russia party, whom The Insider describes as an informant.
Panov served in the FSB and SVR intelligence services before transferring to the Foreign Ministry, according to the report.
He studied infocommunication technologies and special communications systems at the FSO Academy branch in Voronezh, near the Ukrainian border, then worked as a cryptographer at the FSB’s NTC “Atlas” before his Foreign Ministry transfer.
The Insider, citing a Foreign Ministry source, reported Panov was hired at the ministry through the efforts of Ilya Sosnovsky, assistant to LDPR party head Leonid Slutsky, who is known for his ties to security services.
During that period, Panov was in contact with SVR Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Petrishev, who previously served in unit 54939 at the so-called “House of Residents” of the SVR on Goncharnaya Street—a unit that dealt with social networks and online intelligence gathering.
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