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117-548: The organization dates back to 1862 when it was established under the name Главное артиллерийское управление (ГАУ – GAU ). The "R" from "rockets" was added to the title from 19 November 1960. The GRAU is responsible for assigning GRAU indices to Russian army munitions and equipment . As of December 2021, the Chief of the GRAU was Major General Nikolay Romanovsky. Arsenals of the GRAU, according to Kommersant -Vlast in 2005, included

234-856: A series of four terrorist bombings across Russia. This prompted Russian military action against the alleged Chechen culprits. In the first Chechen war, the Russians primarily laid waste to an area with artillery and airstrikes before advancing the land forces. Improvements were made in the Ground Forces between 1996 and 1999; when the Second Chechen War started, instead of hastily assembled "composite regiments" dispatched with little or no training, whose members had never seen service together, formations were brought up to strength with replacements, put through preparatory training, and then dispatched. Combat performance improved accordingly, and large-scale opposition

351-622: A signals intelligence (SIGINT) station in Lourdes , Cuba and other Soviet-bloc countries . Though less well known than the KGB, with which it shared a fierce rivalry, GRU is known to have been involved in several high-profile episodes; this included opening backchannel negotiations with the U.S. government during the Cuban Missile Crisis and contributing to the Profumo scandal that partly contributed to

468-416: A 20-percent rise authorised in 2001. The current professionalisation programme, including 26,000 extra sergeants , was expected to cost at least 31 billion roubles (US$ 1.1 billion). Increased funding has been spread across the whole budget, with personnel spending being matched by greater procurement and research and development funding. However, in 2004, Alexander Goltz said that, given the insistence of

585-557: A 40-percent increase in crime over the previous six months, including a 41-percent rise in serious bodily injuries. Disappearances of weapons rose to rampant levels, especially in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Generals directing the withdrawals from Eastern Europe diverted arms, equipment, and foreign monies intended to build housing in Russia for the withdrawn troops. Several years later,

702-461: A 70-year-old retired army colonel, identified only as "Martin M." was believed to have spied for Russia for years. The officer in question, whose name was not disclosed and who might have been approached under a false flag , was reported to have been engaged in selling official secrets to his GRU handlers from 1992 until September 2018. In July 2019, Austria's Ministry of the Interior confirmed that

819-848: A GRU officer who defected to Great Britain in 1978 and wrote about his experiences in the Soviet military and intelligence services. According to Suvorov, even the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , the country's de facto leader, needed to undergo a security screening to enter GRU headquarters. Following the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991, the GRU continued as an important part of Russia's intelligence services, especially since it

936-474: A change from an Army-Division-Regiment structure to a Corps-Brigade arrangement. The new structures were to be more capable in a situation with no front line, and more capable of independent action at all levels. Cutting out a level of command, omitting two out of three higher echelons between the theatre headquarters and the fighting battalions, would produce economies, increase flexibility, and simplify command-and-control arrangements. The expected changeover to

1053-624: A cover for GRU preparing infrastructure for a surprise attack on Finnish locations in case of a conflict situation. Viktor Ilyushin, a GRU operative working as an Air Force deputy attaché, was expelled from France in 2014 for attempted espionage of the staff of François Hollande . In August 2015, a GRU unit posing as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant supporters called CyberCaliphate took TV5Monde offline for approximately 18 hours. GRU's APT – Fancy Bear used fake Facebook accounts to pose as associates of Emmanuel Macron 's campaign staff, with

1170-505: A defector from the GRU, in 1997 the agency deployed six times as many agents in foreign countries as the SVR, and commanded some 25,000 Spetsnaz troops. The first Russian body for military intelligence dates from 1810, in the context of the Napoleonic Wars raging across Europe, when War Minister Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly proposed to Emperor Alexander I of Russia the formation of

1287-583: A given item belongs to. The second part, a Cyrillic character, indicates the subcategory. The third part, a number, indicates the specific model. The optional suffix can be used to differentiate variants of the same model. Russian army The Russian Ground Forces , also known as the Russian Army in English, are the land forces of the Russian Armed Forces . The primary responsibilities of

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1404-488: A given piece of equipment could have a design name, an industrial name and a service designation. For example, one of the surface-to-air missiles in the S-25 Berkut air defense system had at least four domestic designations: Some Soviet general-purpose bombs bore a designation that looked confusingly similar to GRAU. The first part of a GRAU index is a number indicating which of the several main categories of equipment

1521-417: A group of middle- and senior-ranking officers conducted a regimental map exercise was rudimentary, with young soldiers manning radio-telephones relaying orders to imaginary units in some imaginary field location. On the motor pool visit, I was able to crawl into a T-80 tank—it was cramped, dirty, and in poor repair—and even fire a few rounds in a very primitive simulator. In June 1999 Russian forces, though not

1638-551: A haven for criminals, and a hard-line group within the Kremlin began advocating war. A Security Council meeting was held 29 November 1994, where Yeltsin ordered the Chechens to disarm, or else Moscow would restore order. Defence Minister Pavel Grachev assured Yeltsin that he would "take Grozny with one airborne assault regiment in two hours." The operation began on 11 December 1994 and, by 31 December, Russian forces were entering Grozny ,

1755-646: A mixed Ground Force, of both contract soldiers and conscripts, would remain. (As of 2009, the length of conscript service was 12 months.) Funding increases began in 1999. After some recovery of the economy and the associated rise in income, especially from oil, "..officially reported defence spending [rose] in nominal terms at least, for the first time since the formation of the Russian Federation". The budget rose from 141 billion rubles in 2000 to 219 billion rubles in 2001. Much of this funding has been spent on personnel—there have been several pay rises, starting with

1872-677: A more comfortable posting. Beyond the Russian frontier, drugs were smuggled across the Tajik border—supposedly being patrolled by Russian guards—by military aircraft, and a Russian senior officer, General Major Alexander Perelyakin, had been dismissed from his post with the United Nations peacekeeping force in Bosnia-Hercegovina ( UNPROFOR ), following continued complaints of smuggling, profiteering, and corruption. In terms of contract killings, beyond

1989-524: A problem. Lack of fuel for training and a shortage of well-trained junior officers hampered combat effectiveness. However, concentrating on the interests of his old service, the Strategic Rocket Forces , Sergeyev directed the disbanding of the Ground Forces headquarters itself in December 1997. The disbandment was a "military nonsense", in Orr's words, "justifiable only in terms of internal politics within

2106-574: A secretary. Nikolayevich, along with an SVR officer, had reportedly tried to gather intelligence on the country's electricity infrastructure on behalf of Venezuela's Maduro government. On 17 April 2021, the Czech Republic announced its intelligence agencies had concluded that GRU officers, namely members of Russian military intelligence GRU's unit 29155 , were involved in two massive ammunition depot explosions in Vrbetice (part of Vlachovice ), near

2223-413: A specially assigned codename. For example " 2 S 19   Msta-S ", the 2S19 Msta self-propelled howitzer, has the index 2S19 , without suffix; Msta-S is the codename. Several common misconceptions surround the scope and originating body of these indices. The GRAU designation is not an industrial designation, nor is it assigned by the design bureau. In addition to its GRAU designation,

2340-448: A statement on 4 September 2009, RGF Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Boldyrev said that half of the Russian land forces were reformed by 1 June and that 85 brigades of constant combat preparedness had already been created. Among them are the combined-arms brigade, missile brigades, assault brigades and electronic warfare brigades. During General Mark Hertling 's term as Commander, United States Army Europe in 2011–2012, he visited Russia at

2457-605: A time, but the fighting continued. Following this incident, the separatists were referred to as insurgents or terrorists within Russia. Dzhokar Dudayev was assassinated in a Russian airstrike on 21 April 1996, and that summer, a Chechen attack retook Grozny . Alexander Lebed , then Secretary of the Security Council, began talks with the Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov in August 1996 and signed an agreement on 22/23 August; by

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2574-617: Is an aggressive and well-funded organization which has the direct support of – and access to – President Vladimir Putin, allowing freedom in its activities and leniency with regards to diplomatic and legislative scrutiny." The United States alleges that the GRU, as well as the SVR (its civilian foreign intelligence counterpart), makes use of both legal (intelligence officers with diplomatic protection/official government roles) and illegal operatives. The "Havana syndrome," which affected U.S. diplomats and spies worldwide,

2691-506: Is commanded by Maj. Gen. Andrei Vladimirovich Averyanov  [ d ] and based at the headquarters of the 161st Special Purpose Specialist Training Center in eastern Moscow. Its membership included decorated veterans from the Soviet war in Afghanistan and Russia's most recent series of wars in Chechnya and Ukraine . It has been linked to the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea ,

2808-759: Is more, the order is being enforced, with several prosecutions recorded. President Putin also demanded a halt to dishonest use of military property in November 2005: "We must completely eliminate the use of the Armed Forces' material base for any commercial objectives." The spectrum of dishonest activity has included, in the past, exporting aircraft as scrap metal; but the point at which officers are prosecuted has shifted, and investigations over trading in travel warrants and junior officers' routine thieving of soldiers' meals are beginning to be reported. However, British military analysts comment that "there should be little doubt that

2925-846: Is the foreign military intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation . The GRU controls the military intelligence service and maintains its own special forces units . Unlike Russia's other security and intelligence agencies  – such as the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the Federal Security Service (FSB), and the Federal Protective Service (FSO) – whose heads report directly to

3042-587: The 2006 Georgian–Russian espionage controversy , four officers working for the GRU Alexander Savva, Dmitry Kazantsev, Aleksey Zavgorodny and Alexander Baranov were arrested by the Counter-Intelligence Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia and were accused of espionage and sabotage . This spy network was managed from Armenia by GRU Colonel Anatoly Sinitsin. A few days later

3159-638: The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine . On 5 September 2018, Major Deniss Metsavas and Pjotr Volin were charged with giving classified information to the GRU The two were convicted in February 2019. In September 2018, Finnish police ran a large scale operation against numerous sites owned by Airiston Helmi Oy company that over years accumulated land plots and buildings close to nationally significant key straits, ports, oil refineries and other strategic locations as well as two Finnish Navy vessels. The security operation

3276-697: The Georgian Parliament . Since the mid-1970s the GRU has maintained a satellite communications interception post near Andreyevka, located approximately 80 kilometres (50 miles) from Spassk-Dalny , Primorsky Krai . According to a Western assessment of the GRU seen by Reuters in the autumn of 2018, the GRU had a long-running program to run "illegal" spies, i.e. those who work without diplomatic cover and who live under an assumed identity in foreign countries for years. The assessment said: "It plays an increasingly important role in Russia's development of Information Warfare (both defensive and offensive). It

3393-577: The NKVD , and later KGB ; however, public statements of Soviet military intelligence veterans state the Fourth Directorate, and later GRU, had always been operationally subordinate to the KGB. Military intelligence was headquartered in a small and nondescript complex west of the Kremlin, whereas the NKVD was in the very centre of Moscow, next to the building that housed People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs at

3510-630: The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (then investigating the Douma chemical attack by Russia-backed Bashar al-Assad and evidence in the Skripal case). Spain has also investigated the travel of Unit 29155 member Denis Sergeev (who has also used the name Sergei Fedotov) to Barcelona in 2017 around the time of the 2017 Catalan independence referendum . The unit is also accused of being behind

3627-688: The Soviet Armed Forces as a single military structure for the new Commonwealth of Independent States . The last Minister of Defence of the Soviet Union , Marshal Yevgeny Shaposhnikov , was appointed supreme commander of the CIS Armed Forces in December 1991. Among the numerous treaties signed by the former republics, in order to direct the transition period, was a temporary agreement on general purpose forces, signed in Minsk on 14 February 1992. However, once it became clear that Ukraine (and potentially

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3744-628: The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe also necessitated great adjustments. The Ministry of Defence newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda published a reform plan on 21 July 1992. Later one commentator said it was "hastily" put together by the General Staff "to satisfy the public demand for radical changes." The General Staff , from that point, became a bastion of conservatism, causing a build-up of troubles that later became critical. The reform plan advocated

3861-550: The United States Department of Justice indicted six Unit 74455 GRU officers for multiple cyberattacks, including the December 2015 Ukraine power grid cyberattack , the 2017 Macron e-mail leaks , the 2017 NotPetya attacks , the 2018 Winter Olympics hack (for which the GRU attempted to frame North Korea ), several 2018 attacks on Skripal case investigators, and a 2018–2019 cyberattack campaign against Georgian media and

3978-565: The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Spetsnaz GRU remained intact as part of the Russian GRU until 2010, when it was reassigned to other agencies. In 2013, however, the decision was reversed and Spetsnaz GRU units were reassigned to GRU divisions and placed under GRU authority again. GRU officers train at a Ministry of Defence military academy at 50 Narodnoe Opolchenie Street, with intelligence agents receiving additional training at

4095-571: The president of Russia (see Intelligence agencies of Russia ), the director of the GRU is subordinate to the Russian military command, reporting to the Minister of Defence and the Chief of the General Staff . The directorate is reputedly Russia's largest foreign-intelligence agency, and is distinguished among its counterparts for its willingness to execute riskier "complicated, high stakes operations". According to unverified statements by Stanislav Lunev ,

4212-516: The 103rd Arsenal at Saransk , Mordovia , and the 116th at Krasno-Oktyabrskiy were all in the Volga–Urals Military District . Since 2009, there have been a number of fires and explosions at GRAU ammunition storage depots. GRAU indices are of the form ⟨number⟩ ⟨letter⟩ ⟨number⟩ , sometimes with a further suffix ⟨letter⟩ ⟨number⟩ . They may be followed by

4329-481: The 2015 poisonings of Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Grebev (also spelled Emilyan), the 2016 Montenegro coup attempt , and the poisoning of Russian defector Sergei Skripal . Unit 29155 operatives have also been tracked to Switzerland during the time (early 2018) other GRU units hacked the World Anti-Doping Agency (then investigating state-sponsored doping by Russian Olympians ) and attempted to hack

4446-608: The 53rd at Dzerzhinsk, Nizhniy Novogorod Oblast , the 55th in the Sklad-40 microraion at Rzhev , the 60th at Kaluga , the 63rd at Lipetsk , the 75th at Serpukhov south of Moscow, and the 97th at Skolin (all five in the Moscow Military District ). An additional possibly disused arsenal in the Moscow Military District is the 107th at Toropets . The 5th at Alatyr, Chuvash Republic , the 80th Arsenal at Gagarskiy,

4563-534: The Armed Forces to the new opportunities and challenges they faced. The new Russian Ground Forces inherited an increasing crime problem from their Soviet predecessors. As draft resistance grew in the last years of the Soviet Union, the authorities tried to compensate by enlisting men with criminal records and who spoke little or no Russian. Crime rates soared, with the military procurator in Moscow in September 1990 reporting

4680-535: The Baltic States, and four military districts—totaling 57 divisions—were handed over to Belarus and Ukraine. Some idea of the scale of the withdrawal can be gained from the division list . For the dissolving Soviet Ground Forces, the withdrawal from the former Warsaw Pact states and the Baltic states was an extremely demanding, expensive, and debilitating process. As the military districts that remained in Russia after

4797-569: The Chechen capital. The 131st Motor Rifle Brigade was ordered to make a swift push for the centre of the city, but was then virtually destroyed in Chechen ambushes. After finally seizing Grozny amid fierce resistance, Russian troops moved on to other Chechen strongholds. When Chechen militants took hostages in the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis in Stavropol Kray in June 1995, peace looked possible for

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4914-1067: The Cherepovets Higher Military School of Radio Electronics. The A.F. Mozhaysky Military-Space Academy has also been used to train GRU officers. According to the Federation of American Scientists : "Though sometimes compared to the US Defense Intelligence Agency , [the GRU's] activities encompass those performed by nearly all joint US military intelligence agencies as well as other national US organizations. The GRU gathers human intelligence through military attaches and foreign agents. It also maintains significant signals intelligence ( SIGINT ) and imagery reconnaissance ( IMINT ) and satellite imagery capabilities." Soviet GRU Space Intelligence Directorate had put more than 130 SIGINT satellites into orbit. GRU and KGB SIGINT network employed about 350,000 specialists. On 9 November 2018 Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said that

5031-701: The Czech-Slovak border, in October 2014. The explosions killed two persons and "inflicted immense material damage, seriously endangered and disrupted the lives of many local residents", according to the Czech prime minister. In 2007, Deniss Metsavas, a Lasnamäe -born member of the Estonian Land Forces , was targeted with a honey trapping operation while visiting Smolensk . He was subsequently blackmailed into providing information to GRU handlers. His father, Pjotr Volin,

5148-824: The Expedition for Secret Affairs under the War Ministry ( Russian : Экспедиция секретных дел при военном министерстве ); two years later, it was renamed the Special Bureau ( Russian : Особая канцелярия ). In 1815, the Bureau became the First Department under the General Chief of Staff. In 1836, the intelligence functions were transferred to the Second Department under the General Chief of Staff. After many name-changes through

5265-416: The Fourth Department, the Intelligence Service, the Razvedupr , or the RU. […] As a result of the re-organisation [in 1926], carried out in part to break up Trotsky's hold on the army, the Fourth Department seems to have been placed directly under the control of the State Defense Council (Gosudarstvennaia komissiia oborony, or GKO), the successor of the RVSR. Thereafter its analysis and reports went directly to

5382-413: The GKO and the Politburo, apparently even bypassing the Red Army Staff. The first head of the Fourth Directorate was Yan Karlovich Berzin , who remained in the post from March 1924 until April 1935 (in 1938, he was arrested and executed as a Trotskyite during the Stalinist purges ). Military intelligence was known for its fierce independence from the rival "internal intelligence organizations" , such as

5499-540: The GRU handled human intelligence exclusively outside the USSR. In addition to operations against the Axis powers, GRU is credited with having infiltrated the British nuclear weapon programme and up to 70 American government and scientific institutions. During the Cold War , the GRU, like many of its Western rivals, maintained rezidenturas , or resident spies, worldwide; these included both "legal" agents, based at Soviet embassies with official diplomatic cover , and "illegal" officers without cover . It also maintained

5616-445: The GRU since 1997, reportedly over Korabelnikov's objections to proposed reforms. Pursuant to these reforms, the following year, the official name of the unit was changed from "GRU" to the "Main Directorate of the Russian General Staff", or "G.U."; however, "GRU" continues to be commonly used in media. The GRU underwent severe reductions in funding and personnel following the 2008 Russo-Georgian War , during which it failed to discover

5733-486: The GU's 100th anniversary, President Putin proposed restoring the agency's former name: Главное разведывательное управление (GRU). The GRU is organized into numerous directorates, directions, and sections. According to the data available in open sources in 1997, the structure of the Main Directorate consists of at least 12 known directorates and several other auxiliary departments. The American Congressional Research Service , based on interviews with various experts, gives

5850-425: The Ground Forces in 1994: The Russian barracks were spartan, with twenty beds lined up in a large room similar to what the U.S. Army had during World War II. The food in their mess halls was terrible. The Russian "training and exercises" we observed were not opportunities to improve capabilities or skills, but rote demonstrations, with little opportunity for maneuver or imagination. The military college classroom where

5967-434: The Ground Forces is based in Moscow . The primary responsibilities of the Russian Ground Forces are the protection of the state borders, combat on land, the security of occupied territories, and the defeat of enemy troops. The Ground Forces must be able to achieve these goals both in nuclear war and non-nuclear war, especially without the use of weapons of mass destruction . Furthermore, they must be capable of protecting

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6084-399: The Ground Forces, were involved in a confrontation with NATO. Parts of the 1st Separate Airborne Brigade of the Russian Airborne Forces raced to seize control of Pristina Airport in what became Kosovo , leading to the Incident at Pristina airport . The Second Chechen War began in August 1999 after Chechen militias invaded neighboring Dagestan , followed quickly in early September by

6201-447: The Institute of the Russian Diaspora. The unit originated from Soviet GLAVPUR ( Glavnoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie , or the Main Political Department) and was created in early 1990s and notably employed colonel Aleksandr Viktorovich Golyev, whose memoirs were published in 2020 along with other GRU documents. In the 1990s, the unit focused on pro-Soviet disinformation in newly split republics such as Lithuania and Chechnya. In later years

6318-429: The Kholodov case, there have been widespread rumours that GRU Spetsnaz personnel have been moonlighting as mafiya hitmen. Reports such as these continued. Some of the more egregious examples have included a constant-readiness motor rifle regiment's tanks running out of fuel on the firing ranges, due to the diversion of their fuel supplies to local businesses. Visiting the 20th Army in April 2002, Sergey Ivanov said

6435-472: The Ministry of Defence". The Ground Forces' prestige declined as a result, as the headquarters disbandment implied—at least in theory—that the Ground Forces no longer ranked equally with the Air Force and Navy. Under President Vladimir Putin , more funds were committed, the Ground Forces Headquarters was reestablished, and some progress on professionalisation occurred. Plans called for reducing mandatory service to 18 months in 2007, and to one year by 2008, but

6552-411: The Prosecutor General. Fridinsky also lambasted the military investigations department for their alleged lack of efficiency in investigative matters, with only one in six criminal cases being revealed. Military commanders were also accused of concealing crimes committed against servicemen from military officials. A major corruption scandal also occurred at the elite Lipetsk pilot training center , where

6669-408: The Red Army. (Since 2006, the Russian Federation has officially observed the date of 5 November as the professional holiday of military intelligence in Russia.) The military human intelligence service thus established was originally known as the Registration Agency ( Registrupravlenie , or Registrupr ; Russian: Региструпр ) of the Field Headquarters of the Revolutionary Military Council of

6786-433: The Republic; Simon Aralov was its first head. Its early history was marked by a series of reorganisations influenced by the Soviet-Polish War , the consolidation and restablisation of the Soviet Union, and the general reorganisation of the Red Army; this included changes to its name, status, and responsibilities. Throughout most of the interwar period, the men and women who worked for Red Army Intelligence called it either

6903-403: The Russian Ground Forces are the protection of the state borders, combat on land, and the defeat of enemy troops. The President of Russia is the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation . The Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Ground Forces is the chief commanding authority of the Russian Ground Forces. He is appointed by the President of Russia. The Main Command of

7020-470: The Russian constitutional crisis of 1993 after President Yeltsin issued an unconstitutional decree dissolving the Russian Parliament, following its resistance to Yeltsin's consolidation of power and his neo-liberal reforms. A group of deputies, including Vice President Alexander Rutskoi , barricaded themselves inside the parliament building. While giving public support to the President, the Armed Forces, led by General Grachev, tried to remain neutral, following

7137-425: The Russian intelligence's recent operations that appeared to be botched might have been intended for discovery. Similarly, in 2019, Eerik-Niiles Kross , a former Estonian intelligence official, opined that GRU's apparent sloppiness "has become part of the psychological warfare . It's not that they have become that much more aggressive. They want to be felt. It's part of the game." On 2 November 2018, while marking

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7254-429: The Sandworm Team or the Main Center for Technologies, used various fictitious online identities ( DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 ) to coordinate the release of the politically sensitive stolen documents with WikiLeaks for "maximum political impact" starting on the eve of the 2016 Democratic National Convention . Its guilt has been reported by American media and a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation. In October 2020,

7371-430: The U.S. Foreign Military Studies Office went as far as to say that the Armed Forces were "an institution increasingly defined by the high levels of military criminality and corruption embedded within it at every level." The FMSO noted that crime levels had always grown with social turbulence, such as the trauma Russia was passing through. The author identified four major types among the raft of criminality prevalent within

7488-509: The WhisperGate malware against several Ukrainian organizations. The advisory detailed the tactics and techniques used by Unit 29155 and offered further analysis of WhisperGate. Unit 35555 is a socio-psychological research laboratory linked to supporting Wagner and other private military companies. Unit 54777, alternately called the 72nd Special Service Center, is one of the GRU's primary psychological warfare capabilities. Unit 54777 retains several front organizations , including InfoRos and

7605-473: The alleged Russian bounty program where Taliban militants were paid to kill American troops, although the program's existence is uncertain, unproven, and unverified. The FBI, CISA , and NSA concluded that cyber actors linked to the GRU's 161st Specialist Training Center (Unit 29155) had conducted cyber operations targeting global entities for espionage, sabotage, and reputational harm since at least 2020. Starting on January 13, 2022, these actors deployed

7722-438: The arrested officers were handed over to Russia through the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) . Spetsnaz GRU unit No. 48427, an airborne unit, participated in the Russo-Georgian War . The 2015 Bundestag hack was attributed by German intelligence to the GRU. In 2020, Germany issued an arrest warrant for Dmitry Badin, a GRU officer and Unit 26165/ Fancy Bear member also accused of involvement in

7839-508: The attempted 2018 OPCW hack and targeting its investigation into the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), for which the Dutch investigation blames pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists armed with surface-to-air missiles by Russia. Unit 29155 is tasked with foreign assassinations and other covert activities aimed at destabilizing European countries. The Unit is thought to have operated in secret since at least 2008, though its existence only became publicly known in 2019. It

7956-415: The bottom of Kuznetsky Most . Consequently, Soviet military intelligence came to be known in Soviet diplomats' cant as distant neighbours (Russian: дальние соседи ) as opposed to the near neighbours of the NKVD/KGB. The GRU was created under its current name and form by Joseph Stalin in February 1942, less than a year after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany . From April 1943

8073-502: The collapse of the Union consisted mostly of the mobile cadre formations, the Ground Forces were, to a large extent, created by relocating the formerly full-strength formations from Eastern Europe to under-resourced districts. However, the facilities in those districts were inadequate to house the flood of personnel and equipment returning from abroad, and many units "were unloaded from the rail wagons into empty fields." The need for destruction and transfer of large amounts of weaponry under

8190-452: The colonel's handler was a Moscow-born GRU officer Igor Egorovich Zaytsev, a Russian national, for whom an international arrest warrant had been issued. An investigation by Bellingcat and Capital identified GRU officer Denis Vyacheslavovich Sergeev (using the alias Sergey Vyacheslavovich Fedotov) as a suspect in the 2015 poisoning of Bulgarian arms dealer Emiliyan Gebrev ( Емилиян Гебрев ) in Sofia , following an attack that mirrored

8307-409: The country and that, at the same time, they are also dangerous for Russia. Top military personnel demonstrate neither the will nor the ability to effect fundamental changes." More money is arriving both for personnel and equipment; Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin stated in June 2008 that monetary allowances for servicemen in permanent-readiness units will be raised significantly. In May 2007, it

8424-506: The deputy commander, the chief of staff and other officers allegedly extorted 3 million roubles of premium pay from other officers since the beginning of 2010. The Tambov military garrison prosecutor confirmed that charges have been lodged against those involved. The affair came to light after a junior officer wrote about the extortion in his personal blog. Sergey Fridinskiy, the Main Military Prosecutor acknowledged that extortion in

8541-400: The distribution of supplementary pay in army units is common, and that "criminal cases on the facts of extortion are being investigated in practically every district and fleet." In August 2012, Prosecutor General Fridinsky again reported a rise in crime, with murders rising more than half, bribery cases doubling, and drug trafficking rising by 25% in the first six months of 2012 as compared to

8658-461: The drafted private." The Ground Forces' performance in the First Chechen War has been assessed by a British academic as "appallingly bad". Writing six years later, Michael Orr said "one of the root causes of the Russian failure in 1994–96 was their inability to raise and deploy a properly trained military force." Then Lieutenant Colonel Mark Hertling of the U.S. Army had the chance to visit

8775-419: The early 1990s eventuated, for three reasons: Firstly, there was an absence of firm civilian political guidance, with President Yeltsin primarily interested in ensuring that the Armed Forces were controllable and loyal, rather than reformed. Secondly, declining funding worsened the progress. Finally, there was no firm consensus within the military about what reforms should be implemented. General Pavel Grachev ,

8892-646: The end of that month, the fighting ended. The formal ceasefire was signed in the Dagestani town of Khasavyurt on 31 August 1996, stipulating that a formal agreement on relations between the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the Russian federal government need not be signed until late 2001. Writing some years later, Dmitri Trenin and Aleksei Malashenko described the Russian military's performance in Chechniya as "grossly deficient at all levels, from commander-in-chief to

9009-608: The expulsion of several Russian Embassy staffers, including the defence attaché to Ottawa . In December 2020, Migración Colombia confirmed the expulsion of two Russian diplomats accused of espionage. One of the assailants was identified as Aleksandr Nikolayevich Belousov who, according to the National Intelligence Directorate of Colombia, is a GRU officer that had been credited by the Russian Embassy in Bogotá as

9126-472: The failed 2018 Salisbury poisoning , and an unprecedented number of disclosed GRU agents. Korobov died on 21 November 2018, "after a serious and prolonged illness", according to the official Defence Ministry statement. His death provoked speculations and unverified reports of him having fallen ill in October that year following a harsh dressing-down from President Vladimir Putin . However, former CIA station-chief Daniel Hoffman cautioned in 2017 that some of

9243-403: The fall of a British administration. GRU was distinguished for its "closer ties with revolutionary movements and terrorist groups, greater experience with weapons and explosives, and even tougher training for recruits"; new recruits were allegedly shown footage of a traitorous officer being fed into a crematorium alive. The existence of the GRU was not publicized during the Soviet era, though it

9360-410: The first Russian Minister of Defence (1992–96), broadly advertised reforms, yet wished to preserve the old Soviet-style Army, with large numbers of low-strength formations and continued mass conscription. The General Staff and the armed services tried to preserve Soviet-era doctrines, deployments, weapons, and missions in the absence of solid new guidance. British military expert Michael Orr claims that

9477-640: The following organization of the GRU, although it acknowledges that the organization's true structure is "a closely guarded secret." 4 Regional Directorates: 11 Mission-Specific Directorates: Unit 26165, also known as Fancy Bear, STRONTIUM, and APT28, is a cyber operations / hacking group . Unit 26165 was originally created during the Cold War as the 85th Main Special Service Center, responsible for military intelligence cryptography . The Netherlands has accused Unit 26165 of also being involved in

9594-470: The forces—weapons trafficking and the arms trade; business and commercial ventures; military crime beyond Russia's borders; and contract murder. Weapons disappearances began during the dissolution of the Union and has continued. Within units "rations are sold while soldiers grow hungry ... [while] fuel, spare parts, and equipment can be bought." Meanwhile, voyemkomats take bribes to arrange avoidance of service, or

9711-669: The former commander in Germany, General Matvey Burlakov , and the Defence Minister, Pavel Grachev , had their involvement exposed. They were also accused of ordering the murder of reporter Dmitry Kholodov , who had been investigating the scandals. In December 1996, Defence Minister Igor Rodionov ordered the dismissal of the Commander of the Ground Forces, General Vladimir Semyonov , for activities incompatible with his position — reportedly his wife's business activities. A 1995 study by

9828-418: The goal of interfering with the 2017 French presidential election . Georgy Petrovich Roshka, a member of the GRU's Unit 26165 was involved in the theft of Macron's emails, and subsequent distribution via WikiLeaks . In December 2019, Le Monde reported that the joint effort by British, Swiss, French and U.S. intelligence agencies had discovered an apparent "rear base" of GRU in southeastern France, which

9945-472: The hierarchy had great difficulty in fully understanding the changed situation, due to their education. As graduates of Soviet military academies , they received great operational and staff training, but in political terms they had learned an ideology, rather than a wide understanding of international affairs. Thus, the generals—focused on NATO expansion in Eastern Europe—could not adapt themselves and

10062-415: The hierarchy on trying to force contract soldiers into the old conscript pattern, there is little hope of a fundamental strengthening of the Ground Forces. He further elaborated that they are expected to remain, to some extent, a military liability and "Russia's most urgent social problem" for some time to come. Goltz summed up by saying: "All of this means that the Russian armed forces are not ready to defend

10179-631: The invitation of the Commander of the Ground Forces, "Colonel-General (corresponding to an American lieutenant general) Aleksandr Streitsov . ..[A]t preliminary meetings" with the Embassy of the United States, Moscow , the U.S. Defence Attache told Hertling that the Ground Forces "while still substantive in quantity, continued to decline in capability and quality. My subsequent visits to the schools and units [Colonel General] Streitsov chose reinforced these conclusions. The classroom discussions were sophomoric, and

10296-505: The more advanced anti-aircraft weapons obtained by Georgia. However, it continued to play a key role in several Russian operations, including in Russia's intervention in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and the subsequent annexation of Crimea . GRU agents were also implicated in numerous cyberwarfare operations across the West, including in the U.S., France, and Germany. Many of its successes took place during

10413-609: The national interests of Russia within the framework of its international obligations. The Main Command of the Ground Forces is officially tasked with the following objectives: It should be clearly noted that Spetsnaz GRU , most special forces, are under the control of the Main Reconnaissance Directorate (GRU), now the Main Directorate of the General Staff . As the Soviet Union dissolved, efforts were made to keep

10530-419: The new structure proved to be rare, irregular, and sometimes reversed. The new brigades that appeared were mostly divisions that had broken down until they happened to be at the proposed brigade strengths. New divisions—such as the new 3rd Motor Rifle Division in the Moscow Military District , formed on the basis of disbanding tank formations—were formed, rather than new brigades. Few of the reforms planned in

10647-523: The other republics) was determined to undermine the concept of joint general purpose forces and form their own armed forces, the new Russian government moved to form its own armed forces. Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a decree forming the Russian Ministry of Defence on 7 May 1992, establishing the Russian Ground Forces along with the other branches of the Russian Armed Forces . At

10764-479: The overall impact of theft and fraud is much greater than that which is actually detected". Chief Military Prosecutor Sergey Fridinskiy said in March 2007 that there was "no systematic work in the Armed Forces to prevent embezzlement". In March 2011, Military Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky reported that crimes had been increasing steadily in the Russian ground forces for the past 18 months, with 500 crimes reported in

10881-438: The parliament building had been stormed, the parliamentary leaders arrested, and temporary censorship imposed, Yeltsin succeeded in retaining power. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Chechens declared independence in November 1991, under the leadership of a former Air Forces officer, General Dzhokar Dudayev . The continuation of Chechen independence was seen as reducing Moscow's authority; Chechnya became perceived as

10998-493: The period of January to March 2011 alone. Twenty servicemen were crippled and two killed in the same period as a result. Crime in the ground forces was up 16% in 2010 as compared to 2009, with crimes against other servicemen constituting one in every four cases reported. Compounding this problem was also a rise in "extremist" crimes in the ground forces, with " servicemen from different ethnic groups or regions trying to enforce their own rules and order in their units ", according to

11115-435: The reorganization, the 4-chain command structure ( military district – field army – division – regiment ) that was used until then was replaced with a 3-chain structure: strategic command – operational command – brigade. Brigades are supposed to be used as mobile permanent-readiness units capable of fighting independently with the support of highly mobile task forces or together with other brigades under joint command. In

11232-605: The same period in the previous year. Following the release of these statistics, the Union of the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia denounced the conditions in the Armed Forces as a "crime against humanity". In July 2013, the Prosecutor General of Russia 's office revealed that corruption in the same year had grown 5.5 times as compared to the previous year, costing the Russian government 4.4 billion rubles (US$ 130 million). It

11349-523: The same source point out that the Russian Armed Forces faced major disruption in 2008, as demographic change hindered plans to reduce the term of conscription from two years to one. A major reorganisation of the force began in 2007 by the Minister for Defence Anatoliy Serdyukov , with the aim of converting all divisions into brigades, and cutting surplus officers and establishments. In the course of

11466-769: The same time, the General Staff was in the process of withdrawing tens of thousands of personnel from the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany , the Northern Group of Forces in Poland, the Central Group of Forces in Czechoslovakia, the Southern Group of Forces in Hungary, and from Mongolia. Thirty-seven Soviet Ground Forces divisions had to be withdrawn from the four groups of forces and

11583-696: The techniques used in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal . That attack has been specifically tied to Unit 29155 . Three individuals were charged in absentia by the Bulgarians in January 2020. In March 2021, six Bulgarian nationals alleged to be members of a GRU spy ring operating in Bulgaria were arrested in Sofia . The GRU received intelligence from Jeffrey Delisle of the Royal Canadian Navy , leading to

11700-490: The tenure of Igor Sergun , who headed the service from late 2011 until his death in early January 2016. Sergun's sudden death shortly after the restoration of the GRU's influence led to speculations of foul play by Russian adversaries. The tenure of Sergun's successor, Igor Korobov , was marked by what some news media construed as multiple high-profile setbacks, such as the thwarted 2016 coup d'état attempt in Montenegro ,

11817-667: The unit covered a broad range of activities from running NGOs targeting Russian expatriates in Western countries (InfoRos, Institute of the Russian Diaspora, World Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots Living Abroad, Foundation for Supporting and Protecting the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad) and manipulating public opinion in Russia and abroad in preparation for armed conflicts such as in Georgia, Donbas or Syria. Unit 74455, also known as

11934-464: The units in training were going through the motions of their scripts with no true training value or combined arms interaction—infantry, armor, artillery, air, and resupply all trained separately." After Sergey Shoygu took over the role of Ministry of Defence , the reforms Serdyukov had implemented were reversed. He also aimed to restore trust with senior officers as well as the Ministry of Defence in

12051-541: The volume of theft was "simply impermissible". Ivanov said that 20,000 servicemen were wounded or injured in 2002 as a result of accidents or criminal activity across the entire armed forces - so the ground forces figure would be less. Abuse of personnel, sending soldiers to work outside units—a long-standing tradition which could see conscripts doing things ranging from being large scale manpower supply for commercial businesses to being officers' families' servants—is now banned by Sergei Ivanov's Order 428 of October 2005. What

12168-681: The wake of the intense resentment Serduykov's reforms had generated. He did this a number of ways but one of the ways was integrating himself by wearing a military uniform . Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation , formerly the Main Intelligence Directorate , and still commonly known by its previous abbreviation GRU ,

12285-513: The wishes of the officer corps. The military leadership were unsure of both the rightness of Yeltsin's cause and the reliability of their forces, and had to be convinced at length by Yeltsin to attack the parliament. When the attack was finally mounted, forces from five different divisions around Moscow were used, and the personnel involved were mostly officers and senior non-commissioned officers . There were also indications that some formations deployed into Moscow only under protest. However, once

12402-675: The years, in April 1906, the Military intelligence was carried out by the Fifth Department under the General Chief of Staff of the War Ministry. The GRU's first predecessor in Soviet Russia was established by the secret order signed on 5 November 1918 by Jukums Vācietis , the first commander-in-chief of the Red Army (RKKA), and by Ephraim Sklyansky , deputy to Leon Trotsky , the civilian leader of

12519-468: Was also recruited by GRU agents as leverage against Deniss, and would serve as a courier for classified information. In May 2017, Russian citizen Artem Zinchenko was convicted of spying on Estonia for the GRU. In 2018, Zinchenko was traded back to Russia in exchange for Raivo Susi, an Estonian imprisoned for espionage. In 2022, Zinchenko fled Russia to seek asylum in Estonia, citing personal opposition to

12636-421: Was also revealed that total number of registered crimes in the Russian armed forces had declined in the same period, although one in five crimes registered were corruption-related. "In 2019, Chief Military Prosecutor Valery Petrov reported that some $ 110 million had been lost due to corruption in the military departments and the number was on the uptick." The Russian Ground Forces reluctantly became involved in

12753-414: Was announced that enlisted pay would rise to 65,000 roubles (US$ 2,750) per month, and the pay of officers on combat duty in rapid response units would rise to 100,000–150,000 roubles (US$ 4,230–$ 6,355) per month. However, while the move to one year conscript service would disrupt dedovshchina , it is unlikely that bullying will disappear altogether without significant societal change. Other assessments from

12870-563: Was crippled. Most of the prominent past Chechen separatist leaders had died or been killed, including former President Aslan Maskhadov and leading warlord and terrorist attack mastermind Shamil Basayev . However, small-scale conflict continued to drag on; as of November 2007, it had spread across other parts of the Russian Caucasus . It was a divisive struggle, with at least one senior military officer dismissed for being unresponsive to government commands: General Colonel Gennady Troshev

12987-531: Was dismissed in 2002 for refusing to move from command of the North Caucasus Military District to command of the less important Siberian Military District. The Second Chechen War was officially declared ended on 16 April 2009. When Igor Sergeyev arrived as Minister of Defence in 1997, he initiated what were seen as real reforms under very difficult conditions. The number of military educational establishments, virtually unchanged since 1991,

13104-441: Was mentioned in the 1931 memoirs of the first OGPU defector, Georges Agabekov , and described in detail in the 1939 autobiography, I Was Stalin's Agent, by Walter Krivitsky , the most senior Red Army intelligence officer ever to defect. GRU became widely known in Russia, and outside narrow confines of the Western intelligence community , during perestroika , due partly to the writings of " Viktor Suvorov " ( Vladimir Rezun ),

13221-618: Was possibly linked to GRU’s Unit 29155, as reported by the Insider. Symptoms included migraines and dizziness. Investigations suggested incidents might have occurred as early as 2016, with potential prior events in Frankfurt, Germany. The U.S. Congress passed the Havana Act in 2021 to provide aid to affected personnel and families. Commonly known as the Spetsnaz GRU , it was formed in 1949. Following

13338-582: Was presumably used by GRU for the clandestine operations carried out throughout Europe. Investigators had identified 15 agents – all of them members of GRU's Unit 29155 – who visited Haute-Savoie in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes , region of France from 2014 to 2018, including Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov , who are believed to be behind the poisoning of the former GRU colonel and British double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018. During

13455-613: Was reduced, and the amalgamation of the Siberian and Trans-Baikal Military Districts was ordered. A larger number of army divisions were given "constant readiness" status, which was supposed to bring them up to 80 percent manning and 100 percent equipment holdings. Sergeyev announced in August 1998 that there would be six divisions and four brigades on 24-hour alert by the end of that year. Three levels of forces were announced; constant readiness, low-level, and strategic reserves. However, personnel quality—even in these favored units—continued to be

13572-412: Was run in parallel in multiple locations, involving Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, local police, Tax Administration, Border Guard, and Finnish Defence Forces. During the operation, a no-fly zone was declared over Turku Archipelago where key objects were located. While official cause given for the raid was multi-million euro money laundering and tax fraud, media speculated that the company had been

13689-693: Was the only one to more or less maintain operational and institutional continuity: the KGB had been dissolved after aiding a failed coup in 1991 against the then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev . It is now succeeded by the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and the Federal Security Service (FSB). Evidencing its growing strategic profile, in 2006 the GRU moved to a new headquarters complex at Khoroshovskoye Shosse  [ ru ] , which cost 9.5 billion rubles to build and incorporates 70,000 square meters. In April 2009, President Dmitry Medvedev fired then-GRU head Valentin Korabelnikov , who had headed

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