Leonid Nikolayevich Sobolev (Russian: Леонид Николаевич Соболев) (9 June 1844 – 13 October 1913) was an Imperial Russian Army general and politician. A veteran of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, General Sobolev was the main proponent of the strand of Russian foreign and military policy that saw for the Russians a duty to expel the Ottoman Empire from Europe and to take the Bosphorus for Russia in order to ensure full access to the Mediterranean Sea. Recognising that the United Kingdom maintained a policy of preventing this Sobolev advocated mobilising forces near Afghanistan and British India in order to distract British attention from the Ottomans and give a Russia a free hand in that region.