GRU operative Viktor Labin exposed by The Insider arrested in Belgium

A court in Belgium has ordered the arrest of Viktor Labin, an operative of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency and the subject of an earlier investigation by The Insider. Labin was responsible for setting up exports of coordinate-measuring machines used by Russia’s defense industry. His detention was noted in a reply from the Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office that is in the possession of The Insider’s editorial team.

According to the document, Belgian police searched Labin’s premises back in June 2025. Since then, he has been held in custody pending trial, with the first hearing in his case set to take place on Feb. 26.

In Belgium, Viktor Labin ran a business together with his sons, Roman and Ruslan. The elder is the founder of Groupe d’Investissement Financier, a company that specialized in supplying equipment to Russian military contractors.

The end recipient of the goods from the Belgian company was Sonatek LLC (ООО «Сонатек»), a Labin family company registered in Moscow. Sonatek provided services for the supply and maintenance of products to at least 18 enterprises involved in Russia’s defense industry.

At the same time, Viktor Labin has a registered address in the well-known dormitory of the GRU academy on Narodnogo Opolcheniya Street (Building 52, Block 4) in Moscow. It is unclear when he moved to Belgium, but as of the year 2000 he was already living in Brussels on Winston Churchill Avenue and running a business in the country.