GRU: Russia’s spy agency with growing global footprint

What is GRU?

GRU stands for the Main Intelligence Directorate, Russia’s military intelligence agency which is one of Moscow’s three spy agencies along with the FSB security service and the SVR foreign intelligence agency.

Its chief Igor Korobov reports to the Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu. The agency’s structure, staff number and finances constitute a state secret. Its official emblem is a black bat flying above a globe.

What does it do?

It has an extensive spy network abroad and its highlytrained ‘spetsnaz’ special forces have fought in various conflicts, including in Afghanistan and Chechnya. In recent years it has gained notoriety for its connection to some of Russia’s most contentious actions abroad.

In July this year, US Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 GRU officers, accusing them of interfering in the US polls.

The Bellingcat investigative team has linked the downing of MH17 in eastern Ukraine in 2014 to a GRU officer who it said ‘supervised the procurement and transport of weapons’.

The agency has also been linked to an attempt to overthrow Montenegro’s government in October, 2016. GRU officers are believed to provide military guidance to the Syrian army and rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Does it kill traitors?

In 2010, Putin famously said that Russian special services do not kill traitors, saying they ‘croak all by themselves’.

He acknowledged that Soviet authorities deployed assassins to get rid of enemies, but said modern Russia no longer does so. While describing Skripal as a ‘scumbag’, Putin this week again dismissed claims Moscow attacked Skripal, saying: ‘No one had to poison anyone there [in Britain’’. British police accuse GRU officers, identified as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, of trying to kill Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

Several top GRU agents have defected to the West in the past.

Vladimir Rezun, who defected in the 1970s, wrote a partly autobiographical book under the pen-name Viktor Suvorov, entitled nickname of the GRU headquarters in Moscow.