GRU

GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. The GRU traces its roots to an organization that was set up after the 1917 Russian Revolution and evolved during World War II into the GRU. The GRU outlasted the Soviet Union and has played a key role in multiple Russian operations on foreign soil in the years since. In 2010 its name was officially changed to Main Directorate (GU), but its former name is still widely used.

Formation and Soviet-era history

Russia first set up an intelligence service called the Special Bureau during the Napoleonic Wars. A reorganization followed in the wake of the 1917 Russian Revolution. The new military intelligence agency was called the Registration Department (Russian: Razvedupravlenie); commanded by Simon Aralov, it focused on protecting the new regime from foreign attempts to overthrow it. It soon became known as the Fourth Directorate of the Red Army and expanded its scope in the next decades to collect intelligence abroad, run propaganda campaigns, spread disinformation, carry out sabotage operations, and support Soviet foreign policy.

The Fourth Directorate was often at odds with other Soviet intelligence agencies, including the Cheka, a predecessor to the KGB. To reduce internal conflict and streamline operations, the GRU, or Main Intelligence Directorate, was formed by merging several existing organizations in 1942. Its first task was to run guerrilla and sabotage campaigns against Nazi Germany during World War II.

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After World War II the GRU continued to run both official and unofficial intelligence operations worldwide, focusing mainly on acquiring military intelligence and assessing rivals’ military capabilities. The GRU infiltrated the British atomic bomb program and also created special combat units called spetsnaz (special ops) to run sabotage and reconnaissance operations. Spetsnaz units were active in combat zones across the globe. They helped train local units in several countries and played an important role in Soviet invasions in Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), and Afghanistan (1979–89).

When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the GRU remained intact, unlike other agencies, such as the KGB (formed in 1954), which were split into smaller organizations. While it suffered from budget cuts and reduced relevance with the end of the Cold War, it kept its independence and continued to run foreign military intelligence. The GRU has no official website, only a brief mention on the Russian defense ministry’s website; its detailed structure, personnel names, and budget remain a state secret.

Organizational structure

The GRU is headquartered in Moscow. It is structured along fifteen directorates. Four of these directorates are region-specific; three of them focus on the European Union, Asia, and Africa, respectively, and a fourth runs intelligence in the Americas, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. The GRU’s eleven mission-specific directorates focus on a variety of topics, including military technology, NATO, space intelligence, and the spetsnaz.

The GRU competes with other Russian intelligence agencies. The KGB was split in 1991 into the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service), which like the GRU is responsible for foreign intelligence, and the FSB (Federal Security Service), which is responsible for domestic counterintelligence but still manages and runs offshore operations, including in post-Soviet states. This puts the GRU at constant odds with its fellow agencies, and each agency’s ability to stay independent and control operations typically relies on its director’s skill in fostering close relationships with political leaders in Russia.

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Role in modern-day Russia

The GRU today continues to run foreign intelligence operations, using human agents as well as technology; it is well known for its electronics, radio, cyber surveillance, and espionage capabilities. Its spetsnaz section is more overt, providing training and support to local militias in both direct and proxy wars; it is also known for organizing sabotage attacks and assassinations.

In 2008 the GRU drew most of the flak for Russia’s struggles in a war with Georgia. Accused of providing poor intelligence, its officer cadre and scope of foreign operations were both downsized. In 2010 the GRU changed its official name to the GU (Main Directorate), but it continued to be informally known by its former name. The agency was at risk of losing its spetsnaz units to the Russian military, but Igor Sergun’s appointment as GRU chief in 2011 turned its fortunes around. Sergun helped reverse the GRU’s downward budgetary trend and ensure the agency retained control of the spetsnaz forces.

The GRU has played a critical role in Russian espionage and conflict operations in the 2010s and ’20s. The spetsnaz units played a major role in the 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the subsequent Russia-Ukraine War. In the Syrian Civil War, spetsnaz units worked with pro-government forces to help the government led by Bashar al-Assad reoccupy several regions. GRU officials have also been linked in media reports to the downing of a Malaysian Airlines flight over Ukraine in 2014, an event for which the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) officially held Russia responsible.

A hacking attack on Germany’s national parliament in 2015 led to the German government issuing an arrest warrant for a hacker with known links to the GRU. Cyberattacks in 2015 and 2016 that shut down parts of Ukraine’s power grid were executed by GRU teams. A 2017 attempt to hack into French Pres. Emmanuel Macron’s emails was attributed by French authorities to the GRU. A 2018 disruption of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics opening ceremony was also linked by media reports to the GRU. Most infamously, the GRU has been charged with hacking the U.S. Democratic Party and its then-candidate Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign; the U.S. Department of Justice charged twelve Russians, all accused of being GRU officers. The Russian government does not officially acknowledge its participation in these cyberattacks.

The GRU has been blamed for a failed 2018 nerve agent attack on former Russian detainee Sergei Skripal in the U.K. that led to a woman’s death. Subsequently, the Netherlands government caught GRU spies trying to hack into the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Since the commencement of Russia’s war with Ukraine, the GRU is believed to have been rebuilding its spy network, especially in Europe, while at the same time attempting to spread disinformation and destabilize regimes believed to be sympathetic to NATO countries. Radio Free Europe reported in 2023 that the GRU had set up a fictitious private military company as a front to recruit and deploy troops in Ukraine.

The GRU has also been blamed for a series of unexplained health incidents that Western intelligence officials call Havana syndrome, which was first publicized in 2016, when several intelligence officers and diplomats in Havana reported experiencing nausea and headaches and hearing piercing and grinding noises. A joint report by several journalistic outlets claimed that the incidents may have been caused by “directed energy weapons” developed by the GRU, although an earlier study by U.S. officials concluded that foreign involvement in these events was unlikely.