GRU (G.U.)

The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (Russian: Гла́вное управле́ние Генера́льного шта́ба Вооружённых Сил Росси́йской Федера́ции), abbreviated G.U.,[1] formerly the Main Intelligence Directorate (Russian: Гла́вное разве́дывательное управле́ние, tr. Glavnoye razvedyvatel'noye upravleniye, IPA: [ˈɡlavnəjə rɐzˈvʲɛdɨvətʲɪlʲnəjə ʊprɐˈvlʲenʲɪjə]) and still commonly known by its previous abbreviation GRU[1] (Russian: ГРУ, IPA: [ɡeeˈru]), is the foreign military-intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (formerly the USSR′s General Staff). Unlike Russia's other security and intelligence agencies, such as the SVR, the FSB, and the FSO, whose heads report directly to the president of Russia, the director of the GRU is subordinate to the Russian military command, directly to the Minister of Defence and the Chief of the General Staff. Until 2010, and again from 2013 onwards, the GRU controlled the military intelligence service and the GRU special forces.

"GRU" redirects here. For other uses, see GRU (disambiguation).
This article is about the Russian G.U.. For the Soviet Union's GRU, see Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU).
G.U. Generalnogo Shtaba
Glavnoje Razvedyvatel'noje Upravlenije
ГРУ ГШ ВС РФ
Главное Разведывательное Управление
Emblem of the G.U. of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia
Agency overview
Formed7 May 1992
Preceding agency
JurisdictionRussian Federation
HeadquartersGrizodubovoy str. 3, Moscow
EmployeesClassified
Annual budgetClassified
Ministers responsible
Agency executive
Parent agencyGeneral Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
Child agencies
WebsiteMinistry of Defense Website

The Directorate is reputedly Russia's largest foreign-intelligence agency.[2] According to unverified statements by Stanislav Lunev, a defector from the GRU, in 1997 the agency deployed six times as many agents in foreign countries as the SVR, the successor of the KGB's foreign operations directorate (PGU KGB). It also commanded some 25,000 Spetsnaz troops as of 1997.[3]

History
GRU Official emblem (until 2009) with motto engraved: "Greatness of the Motherland in your glorious deeds"

The first Russian body for military intelligence dated from 1810: the War Minister Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly suggested to the Emperor Alexander I of Russia the establishment of a permanent body for strategic military intelligence. In January 1810, the Expedition for Secret Affairs under the War Ministry (Russian: Экспедиция секретных дел при военном министерстве) was formed. 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 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 (Trotsky was then the civilian leader of the Red Army).[4][5] Since 2006, the Russian Federation has officially observed the date of 5 November as the professional holiday of military intelligence (Russian: День военного разведчика) in Russia.[6]

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 the Republic.[4] Simon Aralov was its first head. In his history of the early years of the GRU, Raymond W. Leonard writes:

As originally established, the Registration Department was not directly subordinate to the General Staff (at the time called the Red Army Field Staff – Polevoi Shtab). Administratively, it was the Third Department of the Field Staff's Operations Directorate. In July 1920, the RU was made the second of four main departments in the Operations Directorate. Until 1921, it was usually called the Registrupr (Registration Department). That year, following the Soviet–Polish War, it was elevated in status to become the Second (Intelligence) Directorate of the Red Army Staff, and was thereafter known as the Razvedupr. This probably resulted from its new primary peacetime responsibilities as the main source of foreign intelligence for the Soviet leadership. As part of a major re-organisation of the Red Army, sometime in 1925 or 1926 the RU (then Razvedyvatelnoe Upravlenye) became the Fourth (Intelligence) Directorate of the Red Army Staff, and was thereafter also known simply as the "Fourth Department". Throughout most of the interwar period, the men and women who worked for Red Army Intelligence called it either 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 the GKO and the Politburo, apparently even bypassing the Red Army Staff.[7]

The first head of the 4th Directorate was Yan Karlovich Berzin, who remained in the post from March 1924 until April 1935 (subsequently, in 1938, he was arrested and executed as a Trotskyite).

The military intelligence was known in the Soviet government for its fierce independence from the rival "internal intelligence organizations", such as the NKVD, later the KGB. The military intelligence headquarters were located at Prechistenka street, 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 the bottom of Kuznetsky Most. Due to this fact, the Soviet military intelligence came to be known in Soviet diplomats' cant as distant neighbours (Russian: дальние соседи) as opposed to near neighbours, i.e. the NKVD/KGB intelligence officers.[8][9] According to public statements of Soviet military intelligence veterans, the GRU had always been operationally subordinate to the KGB.[8]

The GRU per se (under this name) was established by Joseph Stalin's order of 16 February 1942. From April 1943, the GRU handled human intelligence exclusively outside the USSR.[10][11]

The GRU operated rezidenturas, both "legal" (based at Soviet embassies) and "illegal", all over the world, along with the SIGINT (signals intelligence) station in Lourdes, Cuba, and throughout the former Soviet-bloc countries.

The existence of the GRU was not publicized during the Soviet era, but documents concerning it became available in the West in the late 1920s, and it 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.[12] It became widely known in Russia, and in the West outside the narrow confines of the intelligence community, during perestroika, in part thanks to the writings of "Viktor Suvorov" (Vladimir Rezun), 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, to enter GRU headquarters, needed to go through a security screening.

Following the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991, the GRU continued as an important part of Russia's intelligence services, especially since it was never split up (unlike the KGB).[13] The KGB was dissolved after aiding a failed coup in 1991 against the then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. It has since been divided into the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and the Federal Security Service (FSB).

In 2006, the GRU moved to a new Headquarters complex at Khoroshovskoye Shosse, which cost 9.5 billion rubles to build and incorporates 70,000 square meters.[14][15]

In April 2009, President Dmitry Medvedev fired then-GRU head Valentin Korabelnikov, who had headed the GRU since 1997, reportedly over Korabelnikov's objections to proposed reforms.[16][17]

In 2010, the official name of the unit was changed from "GRU" to the "Main Directorate of the Russian General Chief of Staff", or "G.U.", but "GRU" continued to be commonly used in media.[1][18]

The GRU chief Igor Sergun's death in early January 2016 caused speculations of foul play.[19][20] At the helm of the GRU since late 2011, Igor Sergun was reported to have taken charge of the agency in the wake of the drastic cuts to the service implemented in the course of radical reorganization of the military at the hands of Defence Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov, and was credited with the GRU having recovered some of its former influence, most notably by playing a prominent role in the capture of Crimea in 2014 and in the Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine after an FSB-orchestrated pro-Russian unrest largely fizzled out.[21]

The tenure of Sergun's successor, Igor Korobov, was marked by what news media construed as multiple high-profile failures such as the thwarted 2016 coup d'état attempt in Montenegro and the failed 2018 Salisbury poisoning, as well as an unprecedented number of disclosed GRU agents.[22] Korobov died on 21 November 2018, "after a serious and prolonged illness", according to the official Defence Ministry statement.[23][24][25] 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.[22][26][27] However, former CIA station-chief Daniel Hoffman cautioned in 2017 that some of the Russian intelligence's recent operations that appeared to be botched might have been "discoverable influence operations", i.e. operations that were meant to be discovered.[28][29] Similarly, in 2019, Eerik-Niiles Kross, a former Intelligence Coordinator of the Government of Estonia (1995–2000) opined on the GRU's apparent sloppiness: "That kind of intelligence operation 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."[30]

On 2 November 2018 President Putin proposed restoring the GU's former name: Главное разведывательное управление (GRU).[31]

Organizational structure

The GRU is organized into numerous directorates.[32] According to the data available in open sources, the structure of the Main Directorate consists of 12 directorates and several auxiliary departments.

The First Directorate is responsible for intelligence in Europe.

The Second Directorate is geographically responsible for the Western Hemisphere.

The Third Directorate is geographically responsibility for Asia.

The Fourth Directorate is geographically responsible for Africa and the Middle East.

The Fifth Directorate is responsible for military operations intelligence, including naval and air force intelligence.

The Sixth Directorate is responsible for signals intelligence (SIGINT).[33]

The Seventh Directorate is responsible specifically for NATO.

The Eighth Directorate deals with special purpose administration.

The Ninth Directorate is responsible for military technology.

The Tenth Directorate is the department of war economics.

The Eleventh Directorate is the department of strategic doctrines and arms.

The Twelfth Directorate is responsible for Information warfare.

Unit 54777, alternately called the 72nd Special Service Center, is one of the GRU's primary psychological warfare capabilities.[34] Unit 54777 retains several front organizations, including InfoRos and the Institute of the Russian Diaspora.[34]

SATCOM

Since the mid-1970s, the GRU has maintained a satellite communications interception post near Andreyevka, located approximately fifty miles from Spassk-Dalny, Primorsky Krai.[35][36][37]

GRU illegals

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.[38] The assessment said: "It plays an increasingly important role in Russia's development of Information Warfare (both defensive and offensive). It is an aggressive and well-funded organization which has the direct support of – and access to – [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, allowing freedom in its activities and leniency with regards to diplomatic and legislative scrutiny."[1]

Special Forces of the Main Directorate
Main article: Special Forces of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces

Commonly known as the Spetsnaz GRU, it was formed in 1949. Following 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.[39]

Education

GRU officers train at a Ministry of Defence military academy at 50 Narodnoe Opolchenie Street, with intelligence agents receiving additional training at the Cherepovets Higher Military School of Radio Electronics.[18] The A.F. Mozhaysky Military-Space Academy has also been used to train GRU officers.[18]

Activities by country

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."[40] Soviet GRU Space Intelligence Directorate had put more than 130 SIGINT satellites into orbit. GRU and KGB SIGINT network employed about 350,000 specialists.[41]

Austria
See also: Austria–Russia relations § Russian state's illicit activity in Austria

On 9 November 2018, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said that 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.[42][43][44][45] In July 2019, Austria's Ministry of the Interior confirmed that 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.[46][47][48]

Bulgaria

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 businessman Emilian Gebrev in Sofia, following an attack that mirrored the techniques used in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.[49][50][51][52] That attack has been specifically tied to Unit 29155.[53]

Canada

The GRU received intelligence from Jeffrey Delisle of the Royal Canadian Navy, leading to the expulsion of several Russian Embassy staffers, including the defence attaché to Ottawa.[54][55]

Estonia

A Russian citizen named Artem Zinchenko was convicted of spying on Estonia for GRU in May 2017.[56][57] 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, was also recruited by GRU agents as leverage against Deniss, and would serve as a courier for classified information.[58] On 5 September 2018, Major Deniss Metsavas and Pjotr Volin were charged with giving classified information to the GRU[59][60] The two were convicted in February 2019.[58]

Finland

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 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 might have been a cover for GRU preparing infrastructure for a surprise attack on Finnish locations in case of a conflict situation.[61][62]

France

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.[18] 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.[34]

GRU operatives belonging to Fancy Bear/APT 28 used fake Facebook accounts to pose as associates of Emmanuel Macron's campaign staff, with the goal of interfering with the 2017 French presidential election.[63] 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.[18][64]

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 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.[65][66]

Georgia

During 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 the arrested officers were handed over to Russia through the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).[67][68]

Spetsnaz GRU unit No. 48427, an airborne unit, participated in the Russo-Georgian War.[69]

Japan

In September 2000, Japan expelled Captain Viktor Bogatenkov, a military attaché at the Russian Embassy in Tokyo, on allegations of espionage.[70] Bogatenkov was a GRU agent who received classified information from Shigehiro Hagisaki (萩嵜 繁博), a researcher at the National Institute for Defense Studies.[70][71]

Moldova

In June 2017, Moldova expelled five Russian GRU operatives with diplomatic cover from the Russian Embassy in Chisinau, as they were believed to be attempting to recruit fighters from Gagauzia to fight in the ongoing conflict with Ukraine.[72] Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Grigory Karasin rejected the allegations.[72][73]

Montenegro

The two Russian nationals indicted by Montenegrin prosecution as the organisers of the attempted coup d'état in Montenegro in October 2016 are believed to be GRU officers.[74][75][76][77] One of them, Eduard Vadimovich Shishmakov ("Shirokov") had been officially identified as GRU in October 2014, when Shishmakov, who then held the position of a deputy military attaché at the Russian embassy in Poland, was declared persona non grata by the Polish government.[74][78][79]

The Netherlands and Switzerland

In mid-September 2018, the Swiss press reported that two men allegedly working for the GRU had been arrested in The Hague, the Netherlands in the spring that year, after the Salisbury poisoning incident, for planning to hack the computer systems of the Spiez Laboratory, a Swiss institute analyzing chemical weapon attacks for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).[80][81] In early October 2018, the government of the Netherlands announced they had arrested four GRU operatives on 13 April: Aleksei Morenets, Evgenii Serebriakov, Oleg Sotnikov, and Aleksey Minin.[82] The Russians allegedly attempted to launch a major "close access" cyberattack[83] against the headquarters of the OPCW in the Hague and also intended to travel onwards to the Spiez laboratory in Switzerland, which was testing Novichok samples from Salisbury at the time.[84][85] Investigation conducted by open-source intelligence outlets in the aftermath of the Dutch government's revelations that used Russian road police databases led to identification of further 305 GRU officers whose private cars were registered at GRU headquarters in Moscow.[86] GRU officer Denis Vyacheslavovich Sergeev has also been documented as operating in Geneva and Lausanne.[87]

Qatar

On 13 February 2004, in Doha, two Russian men assassinated Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, an exiled leader of Chechen rebels.[88] Anatoly V. Belashkov and Vasily A. Bogachyov, thought to be GRU members, were found guilty of the murder by a Qatari criminal court, which said the men had acted under direct orders from the Russian leadership.[88][89][90]

Russia

Dmitry Kozak and Vladislav Surkov, members of the Vladimir Putin administration, reportedly served in GRU. Two Chechens, Said-Magomed Kakiev and former warlord Sulim Yamadayev were commanders of Special Battalions Vostok and Zapad ("East" and "West") that were controlled by the GRU. The battalions each included close to a thousand fighters until their disbandment in 2008.[91]

Approximately 300 commandos, intelligence officers and other GRU personnel died during the fighting in Chechnya.[92]

GRU detachments from Chechnya were transferred to Lebanon independently of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon after the 2006 Lebanon War.[93]

Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was assassinated by two GRU officers. GRU officers have also been accused of creating criminal death squads.[94]

Spain

According to reporting by Bellingcat, El País and the Civica Media Foundation, the Audiencia Nacional is investigating a GRU group known as Unit 29155 and its operations in Spain.[95] GRU members Denis Sergeev, Alexey Kalinin and Mikhail Opryshko are reported to have been operating in Barcelona, around the time of the 2017 Catalan independence referendum.[95]

Syria
See also: Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War

The Sixth Directorate was responsible for maintaining the Center S covert listening post in Syria prior to its loss to the Free Syrian Army in 2014.[96][97][98] The Sixth Directorate also operates a signals intelligence listening post at Hmeimim Air Base near Latakia.[99]

In 2015, GRU special forces soldiers have reportedly appeared in Aleppo and Homs.[100][101] GRU officials have also visited Qamishli, near the border with Turkey.[102]

Turkey

In 2018, Turkish government published CCTV videos from assassination of a Chechen commander Abdulvahid Edelgiriev, who was killed in 2015 in Istanbul,[103] claiming the perpetrator was the same person as Anatoliy Chepiga ("Ruslan Boshirov") from Skripal assassination in UK.[104]

Ukraine

The GRU Spetsnaz were involved in the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and in the War in Donbass.[18] During the November 2018, Kerch Strait incident, the GRU's Unit 54777 sent text messages to Ukrainian men in the border region calling on them to report for military service.[34]

United Kingdom
Main article: Poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal

In September 2018, the Crown Prosecution Service formally named two Russian nationals, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov (the names used by the men when entering the UK), as suspected perpetrators of the assassination attempt of the former GRU officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter in March 2018.[105] As part of the charge announcement Scotland Yard released a detailed track of the individuals' 48 hours in the UK. This covered their arrival in the UK at Gatwick Airport, trip to Salisbury the day before the attack, trip to Salisbury on the day of the attack and return to Moscow via Heathrow Airport.[106] The two men stayed both nights in the City Stay Hotel on Bow Road, East London and Novichok was found in their room after police sealed it off on 4 May 2018.[107][108] British Prime Minister Theresa May told the Commons the same day that the suspects were part of the G.U. intelligence service (formerly known as GRU) and the assassination attempt was not a rogue operation and was "almost certainly" approved at a senior level of the Russian state.[105][109]

As a side effect of the Skripal poisoning investigation, Russian and Western media reported conclusions made by open-source intelligence outlets that claimed that GRU operatives were issued Russian foreign travel passports with certain characteristics that would allow their tentative identification.[110] Through further research, in the autumn of 2018, "Boshirov" was publicly exposed as Anatoliy Chepiga, a decorated GRU officer,[111][112][113] and "Petrov" as Alexander Mishkin.[114][115]

United States

GRU officer Stanislav Lunev, who defected to the U.S. in 1992 while he was posted in Washington under the cover of a TASS news agency correspondent, in the 1990s publicized his claims that small nuclear weapons that could be fit into a knapsack or a briefcase or suitcase had been secretly pre-positioned in the U.S. and other countries around the world to be used for sabotage by Russia′s agents in the event of war.[116][116][117] U.S. Congressman, Curt Weldon, pursued these claims publicly while admitting that they had been found largely spurious by the FBI.[118] Searches of the areas identified by Lunev – who admitted he had never planted any weapons in the US – have been conducted, "but law-enforcement officials have never found such weapons caches, with or without portable nuclear weapons".[119]

Electoral interference
See also: Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and Russian interference in the 2018 United States elections

On 29 December 2016, the White House sanctioned the nine entities and individuals, including the GRU as well as the FSB, for their alleged activities to disrupt and spread disinformation during the 2016 US presidential election.[120] In addition, the United States State Department also declared 35 Russian diplomats and officials persona non grata and denied Russian government officials access to two Russian-owned installations in Maryland and New York.[120] On July 13, 2018, an indictment to several GRU Staffers was issued.[121] GRU Unit 26165 and Unit 74455 are alleged to be behind the DCLeaks website, and were indicted for obtaining access and distributing information from data about 500,000 voters from a state election board website as well as the email accounts of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton, and volunteers and employees of the Unites States Presidential Campaign of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC).[122][123] According to information leaked by Reality Winner, the GRU attempted to hack the voting machine manufacturer VR Systems, as well as local election officials.[124]

In July 2018, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein released an indictment returned by a grand jury charging twelve GRU officers with conspiring to interfere in the 2016 elections.[125][126][127]

According to Microsoft VP Tom Burt, a GRU-run group dubbed Strontium (alternatively known as APT28, Sofacy, and Pawn Strorm, and Fancy Bear)[128] has been engaged in spear phishing attacks against at least three campaigns in the 2018 midterm elections.[129]

Notable defectors and double agents
See also: List of Soviet and Eastern Bloc defectors

Directors

The Head of the Russian Military Intelligence is a military officer. He is the primary military intelligence adviser to the Russian Minister of Defense and to the Russian Chief of Staff and to a certain extent also answers to the President of Russia if ordered so.

GRU chief Igor Korobov (right) and Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu in February 2016
The current GRU chief Igor Kostyukov
No. HeadTermPresident(s) served under
1 Yevgeny TimokhinNovember 1991 – August 1992Boris Yeltsin
2 Fyodor LadyginAugust 1992 – May 1997Boris Yeltsin
3 Valentin KorabelnikovMay 1997 – 24 April 2009Boris Yeltsin
Vladimir Putin
Dmitry Medvedev
4 Alexander Shlyakhturov24 April 2009 – 25 December 2011Dmitry Medvedev
5 Igor Sergun26 December 2011 – 3 January 2016Dmitry Medvedev
Vladimir Putin
— vacant position3 January – 1 February 2016Vladimir Putin
6 Igor Korobov2 February 2016 – 21 November 2018Vladimir Putin
7 Igor Kostyukov22 November 2018 – presentVladimir Putin

See also

References
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  2. "Reuters Factbox on Russian military intelligence by Dmitry Solovyov". Reuters. Retrieved 15 November 2014.
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  4. Для выяснения намерений враждебных государств…. Krasnaya Zvezda, 19 October 2019.
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  8. Leonid Mlechin. Дальние соседи. argumenti.ru, 15 November 2018.
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  17. "Russia military spy boss 'sacked'". BBC News. April 24, 2009. Archived from the original on December 30, 2016. Gen Korabelnikov had been the head of military intelligence for 12 years and was a four-star general. Analysts say the 63-year-old was one of the main opponents of the planned military reforms, which could see the Russian armed forces shrink from 1.3 million serving men and women to one million. The majority of those cuts would come from the officer corps, which could see the loss of around 200,000 posts, including many generals. Some of the proposed reforms were said to have included the disbanding of several GRU-controlled army special forces (Spetsnaz) brigades and the redistribution of the command of some GRU structures to the SVR. Gen Korabelnikov is reported to have submitted his resignation in protest last November.
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  20. Yalibnan (March 4, 2016). "Russian military intelligence chief killed in secret operation in Lebanon, report". Ya Libnan. Retrieved March 8, 2016.
  21. Russian GRU military spy chief Igor Sergun dies BBC, 5 January 2016
  22. "Russian military intelligence head's death causes inevitable speculation: Igor Korobov knew a lot about GRU operations, including poisoning of the Skripals". The Guardian. 22 November 2018. Retrieved 22 November 2018.
  23. Умер начальник ГУ ГШ РФ Игорь Коробов tvzvezda.ru, 22 November 2018.
  24. "Источник: умер начальник Главного управления Генштаба ВС РФ Игорь Коробов". TASS. 22 November 2018.
  25. "Russian military intelligence GRU chief dies after 'serious illness' – MoD". RT.
  26. "Head of Russian Skripal-linked GRU spy agency dies". BBC. 22 November 2018. Retrieved 22 November 2018.
  27. Igor Korobov, head of Russian spy agency accused over Salisbury attack, dies aged 63 after 'serious illness' The Telegraph, 22 November 2018.
  28. Cover Lifted, A CIA Spy Offers His Take On Trump And Russia NPR, 8 August 2017.
  29. By Daniel Hoffman. The Russians Were Involved. But It Wasn't About Collusion. The New York Times, 28 July 2017.
  30. Top Secret Russian Unit Seeks to Destabilize Europe, Security Officials Say. NYT, 8 October 2019.
  31. Путин предложил вернуть военной разведке название ГРУ [Putin has proposed returning to the military intellegence agency the title GRU] (in Russian). Interfax. 2 November 2018. Retrieved 29 January 2020. 'Непонятно, куда исчезло слово "разведывательное" - Главное разведывательное управление, надо бы восстановить', - добавил Путин [...]
  32. Pike, John (26 November 1997). "Organization of the Main Intelligence Administration (GRU) Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie (GRU)". Federation of American Scientists.
  33. Pike, John (November 27, 1997). "Signals Intelligence Programs and Activities". Federation of American Scientists. Archived from the original on December 30, 2016. The GRU's Sixth Directorate uses over 20 different types of aircraft, a fleet of 60 SIGINT collection vessels, satellites, and ground stations to collect signals intelligence. Together with FAPSI, the GRU operates SIG1NT collection facilities in over 60 diplomatically protected facilities throughout the world. These agencies also operate large ground collection facilities within the territory of the Commonwealth of Independent States, at Cam Rank Bay, Vietnam, and at Lourdes, Cuba.
  34. Troianovski, Anton; Nakashima, Ellen; Harris, Shane (December 28, 2018). "How Russia's military intelligence agency became the covert muscle in Putin's duels with the West". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 29, 2018.
  35. Ball, Desmond (1993). Signals Intelligence in the Post-cold War Era: Developments in the Asia-Pacific Region. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. p. 105. ISBN 9789813016378. 1. Andreyevka SATCOM Station, Russia
  36. Aid, Matthew (29 July 2012). "Russia's Andreyevka SIGINT Station". Archived from the original on December 30, 2016. The station is located in the Maritime Province of the Russian Far East near the tiny village of Andreyevka (Google Earth transliterates the name as Andreevka) at the following geographic coordinates: 44-30-30N 133-28-28E. [...] Built during the mid-1970s by the Soviets, a former senior NSA official mentioned it to me in the late 1980s as being "the biggest and baddest of the Sov's SIGINT stations". At the station's peak during the Cold War, it was jointly manned by several hundred KGB and GRU (Soviet military intelligence) SIGINTers. Today, the station is owned and operated solely by the GRU, and it would appear that the station has not been upgraded with new equipment in quite some time.
  37. Aid, Matthew (May 12, 2012). "Soviet Eavesdropping Station Identified". Archived from the original on December 30, 2016. Andreyevka SATCOM Station: 44-30-30N 133-28-28E Some of these stations are still apparently active (the largest of which is the Andreyevka station near Vladivostok), although to what degree they are still working COMSAT targets cannot be determined from imagery available on Google Maps.
  38. "What is Russia's GRU military intelligence agency?". Reuters By Guy Faulconbridge. 5 Oct 2018.
  39. McDermott, Roger (2 November 2010). "Bat or Mouse? The Strange Case of Reforming Spetsnaz". Jamestown.org. Retrieved 2014-08-19.
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  42. Verdacht Russen-Spion: Pensionierter Bundesheer Oberst M. weiter in U-Haft. Kurier, 9 May 2019.
  43. Austrian court orders release of suspected Russian spy pending trial Reuters, 13 November 2018.
  44. A Kremlin Spy Mystery in Vienna Shakes the World Capital of Espionage. Observer, 13 November 2018.
  45. Austrian colonel spied for Moscow for decades, says Vienna: If true it ‘will not improve the relationship between Russia and EU,’ says Kurz. politico.eu, 9 November 2018.
  46. Großfahndung nach russischem Spion in Österreich: Er soll für den russischen Militärgeheimdienst tätig gewesen sein - offenbar als Führungsoffizier des mutmaßlichen Salzburger Spionage-Oberst. Kurier, 25 July 2019.
  47. Austria Launches Manhunt for Alleged Russian Spy in Secret GRU Operation
  48. Fitsanakis, Joseph. "Austrian court finds unnamed retired Army colonel guilty of spying for Russia". intelNews. Martin M. reportedly served in peacekeeping missions in the Golan Heights and Cyprus before being posted at one of the Austrian Armed Forces’ two headquarters, located in the western city of Salzburg. It was around that time, say prosecutors, that the unnamed man began spying for Russia. Starting in 1992, he was in regular contact with his Russian handler, who was known to him only as “Yuri”.
  49. Bellingcat Investigation Team (February 7, 2019). "Third Skripal Suspect Linked to 2015 Bulgaria Poisoning". Bellingcat.
  50. "Отрова, оръжия, или войната за "Дунарит"". Capital (in Bulgarian). January 25, 2019.
  51. Rakuszitzky, Moritz. "Third Suspect in Skripal Poisoning Identified as Denis Sergeev, High-Ranking GRU Officer". Bellingcat.
  52. Bellingcat Investigation Team (February 21, 2019). "The Search for Denis Sergeev: Photographing a Ghost". Bellingcat.
  53. Schwirtz, Michael (22 December 2019). "How a Poisoning in Bulgaria Exposed Russian Assassins in Europe". The New York Times.
  54. Chase, Steven; Moore, Oliver; Baluja, Tamara (6 September 2012). "Ottawa expels Russian diplomats in wake of charges against Canadian". The Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on 30 December 2016. The Harper government has expelled staff at Russia's embassy in the wake of charges filed against a Canadian military intelligence officer for allegedly passing secrets to a foreign power, The Globe and Mail has learned. [...] A Russian embassy official acknowledged the following three staffers have recently left Canada, saying, however, that all departures were routine: Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry V. Fedorchatenko, assistant defence attaché. Konstantin Kolpakov, attaché. Mikhail Nikiforov, with the administrative and technical staff. The embassy did not provide a clear explanation for the fourth name now gone from Canada's official list of diplomatic, consular and foreign government representatives: Tatiana Steklova, who had been described as "administrative and technical staff".
  55. Payton, Laura (20 January 2012). "Spying mystery deepens with lack of information". CBC News. Archived from the original on 30 December 2016. Initial media reports said up to four Russian Embassy staff had been removed from a list of embassy and diplomatic staff recognized by Canada. CBC News has confirmed that two have had their credentials revoked since news broke of the naval officer's arrest, while two diplomats left the country a month or more before the arrest this week of Canadian Sub.-Lt. Jeffrey Paul Delisle.
  56. "Estonia Sentences Russian Spy to Five Years in Prison". The Moscow Times. 8 May 2017. Archived from the original on 13 May 2017. Retrieved 13 May 2017. Zinchenko has lived in Estonia on a residence permit since 2013. The Estonian court determined that he was recruited by Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) in 2009, and spent the next four years collecting information about troop movements in Estonia, and about objects of national importance. [...] Zinchenko reportedly passed sensitive information to members of the GRU on multiple occasions, both by means of special communication and in person, on visits to Saint Petersburg.
  57. Jones, Bruce (9 May 2017). "Tallinn jails GRU agent spying on Estonian and NATO forces". Jane's Information Group. Retrieved 13 May 2017. Artem Zinchenko, a Russian citizen legally resident in Estonia since 2013, was convicted on 8 May of espionage for Russia's GRU military intelligence organisation. Recruited in 2009 and arrested in January 2017, Zinchenko was sentenced to five years for spying on locations, equipment, and manoeuvres of Estonian and NATO forces and critical infrastructure.
  58. Weiss, Michael. "The Hero Who Betrayed His Country". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on June 30, 2019.
  59. "Estonia Arrests Army Officer, His Father On Suspicion Of Spying For Russia". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. September 5, 2018.
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  65. "Russia posted GRU agents in French Alps for EU ops — report". DW News. 5 December 2019.
  66. Follorou, Jacques (4 December 2019). "La Haute-Savoie, camp de base d'espions russes spécialisés dans les assassinats ciblés". Le Monde (in French).
  67. Petriashvili, Diana (28 September 2006). "Tbilisi Claims Russian Troop Movements in Response to Spy Dispute". EurasiaNet. Archived from the original on 30 December 2016. A Tbilisi city court September 29 ordered two Russian officers arrested in the Georgian capital, Dmitri Kazantsyev and Alexander Savva, and seven Georgian citizens to be held in pre-trial detention. The Russian consul in Georgia, Valeri Vasiliyev, told Rustavi-2 television that a lawyer for the officers had not been allowed into the courtroom. The Georgian Interior Ministry did not immediately comment on the allegation. The court also passed the same ruling for Konstantin Pichugin, who has been accused of espionage, but who is believed to be inside Russia's regional military headquarters, which remained surrounded by police for a second day. Moscow has refused to surrender Pichugin.
  68. "Georgia Arrests Russian "Intelligence Operatives"". Civil Georgia. 27 September 2006. Archived from the original on 30 December 2016. Georgia's counter-intelligence service arrested four Russian military intelligence (GRU - Glavnoye Razvedovatelnoye Upravlenie) officers and eleven citizens of Georgia who were cooperating with Russian intelligence services, Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili said on September 27 [...] He said that two Russian intelligence operatives were arrested in Tbilisi - GRU colonel Alexander Sava, who was allegedly the chief of the group operating in Georgia, and Dimitri Kazantsev. Two others - Alexander Zavgorodny and Alexander Baranov - were arrested in Batumi, the Georgian Interior Minister said.
  69. Rakuszitzky, Moritz; Romein, Daniel; Dobrokhotov, Roman (November 22, 2018). "Second GRU Officer Indicted in Montenegro Coup Unmasked". bellingcat.
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  71. "Officer admits giving secrets to Russian spy". The Japan Times. November 28, 2000. Hagisaki told the Tokyo District Court that he handed the MSDF documents to Viktor Bogatenkov, 44, in violation of the SDF Law. Bogatenkov, who reportedly is an agent of the Russian intelligence agency GRU, was with Hagisaki when he was arrested but refused to submit to questioning and returned to Moscow two days later.
  72. Williams, Matthias (June 13, 2017). Char, Pravin (ed.). "Exclusive: Russian diplomats expelled from Moldova recruited fighters - sources". Reuters.
  73. Reuters (13 June 2017). Osborn, Andrew (ed.). "Russia Says Report Its Moldova Diplomats Recruited Fighters Is 'Gossip': RIA". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 June 2017. Allegations that five Russian diplomats expelled from Moldova last month recruited fighters for the Moscow-backed separatists in Ukraine were "idle gossip", the RIA news agency quoted a deputy Russian foreign minister as saying on Tuesday. Grigory Karasin made the comment shortly after Reuters published an exclusive report citing Moldovan government and diplomatic sources as saying that the five were ejected because of their alleged activities as undercover officers with the Russian military intelligence agency, the GRU.
  74. Russia 'linked' to election-day coup plot in Montenegro Sky News, 21 February 2017.
  75. Indictment tells murky Montenegrin coup tale: Trial will hear claims of Russian involvement in plans to assassinate prime minister and stop Balkan country's NATO membership. Politico, 23 May 2017.
  76. Investigation Uncovers Second Russian Montenegro Coup Suspect BalkanInsight, 22 November 2018.
  77. Bellingcat раскрыла имя сотрудника ГРУ, подозреваемого в подготовке госпереворота в Черногории NEWSru, 22 November 2018.
  78. Montenegro Coup Suspect ‘Was Russian Spy in Poland’: A Russian suspected by Montenegro of masterminding the recent alleged coup attempt was a military officer who was expelled from Poland amid an espionage scandal in 2014, a Polish diplomat told BIRN. BalkanInsight, 21 February 2017.
  79. Russian passport leak after Salisbury may reveal spy methods The Guardian, 23 September 2018.
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  81. Boffey, Daniel; Wintour, Patrick; Roth, Andrew (14 September 2018). "Dutch expelled Russians over alleged novichok lab hacking plot". The Guardian. The Swiss daily newspaper Tages-Anzeiger reported that the men were carrying equipment that could be used to break into the Spiez laboratory's IT network when they were seized.
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  92. "Spies Still Everywhere, GRU Says". The Moscow Times. July 17, 2003. Archived from the original on December 30, 2016. GRU commando units operate in the armed forces to provide field intelligence and carry out special operations, such as the penetration and elimination of enemy units. The military actively employs GRU commandoes in Chechnya, where they have proven to be about the most able of all military units. More than 300 commandos, intelligence officers and other GRU personnel have died in fighting in Chechnya, Korabelnikov said.
  93. McGregor, Andrew (26 October 2006). "Chechen Troops Accompany Russian Soldiers in Lebanon". Jamestown Foundation. Archived from the original on December 30, 2016. In a surprise move, the Russian Defense Ministry assigned security responsibility for its team of military engineers in Lebanon to two detachments of Chechen troops [...] The East and West battalions of Chechen troops are controlled by the Russian military intelligence (GRU) and do not report directly to the Chechen government.
  94. Special services are making teams for extrajudicial punishment (Russian) Archived 2012-03-10 at WebCite by Igor Korolkov, Novaya Gazeta, 11 January 2007. English translation
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  96. Weiss, Michael (September 1, 2016). "Russia Puts Boots on the Ground in Syria". The Daily Caller. Archived from the original on 2 September 2015. In October 2014, the Free Syrian Army sacked a Russian listening post in Tel al-Hara, south of the Quneitra border crossing with Israel. Its location was key. A YouTube video showed a Syrian officer giving the rebels a guided tour of the office building attached to the facility. Documents hanging on the wall, in both Arabic and Russian, including the symbols for Syrian intelligence and 6th Directorate of Russia’s military intelligence agency (GRU), and photos showed spies from both countries hard at work deciphering intercepts. Maps displayed rebel positions; they also showed coordinates of Israel Defense Force units.
  97. Fitsanakis, Joseph (9 October 2014). "Secret Russian spy base in Syria seized by Western-backed rebels". intelNews. Archived from the original on 11 October 2014. At some point in the video, the seal of Syrian intelligence is clearly visible, placed next to the seal of the GRU's 6th Directorate, the branch of Russian military intelligence that is tasked with collecting signals intelligence (SIGINT).
  98. Oryx (6 October 2014). "Captured Russian Spy Facility Reveals the Extent of Russian Aid to the Assad Regime". bellingcat. Archived from the original on 9 April 2015. The Russian operator of Center S was the Osnaz GRU, responsible for radio electronic intelligence within Russia's Armed Forces. Although not much is known about this unit, its logos can be seen below. "Части особого назначения" – Osnaz GRU and "Военная радиоэлектронная разведка" – Military Radio Electronic Intelligence.
  99. Matthews, Owen. "Erdogan and Putin: Strongmen in love". Newsweek. Archived from the original on 30 December 2016. The electronic intelligence was gathered, according to the report, by a Russian listening station at Hmemim Airport near Latakia, Syria, operated by the Sixth Directorate of GRU military intelligence.
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Further reading
  • Hastings, Max (2015). The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939–1945 (Paperback). London: William Collins. ISBN 978-0-00-750374-2.
  • Suvorov, Viktor (1984). Inside Soviet Military Intelligence.
  • Suvorov, Viktor (1986). Inside the Aquarium.
  • Suvorov, Viktor (1988). Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces.
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