Dirty business

Where and how the GRU has been in action

 1968 – Ten GRU agents attack a secret US airbase in Cambodia on the border with Vietnam and steal an aircraft carrying intelligence equipment.

 1968 – An airborne GRU team fakes engine failure and makes an emergency landing at Prague airport to seize an airhead for the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.

 1979 – A GRU battalion recruited from the Muslim republics of Central Asia joins KGB special forces in the operation to kill Hafizullah Amin, the president of Afghanistan, triggering the Soviet-afghan War.

 2014 –A Russian missile shoots down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine. An investigation links a GRU officer called Oleg Ivannikov to the convoy accompanying the launcher.

 2015 – Russia launches military intervention in Syria and deploys mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a private military contractor allegedly run by GRU special forces veteran Dmitry Utkin.

 2016 – Hackers steal and leak documents from Democratic Party computers in a bid to sabotage the US election. US prosecutors later name and charge 12 GRU officers over the plot.

 October 2016 – Montenegrin security forces foil an armed coup designed to prevent the country’s imminent accession to Nato. Two GRU officers are named as masterminds of the plot.