The fifth of November is formally the 100th anniversary of Russia's Military Intelligence Directorate, which the world has long known as the GRU but, as President Putin pointed out, was for some reason re-designated as GU (Main Directorate). Not just readers of this blog will know that the Directorate recently received about the worst publicity … Continue reading Russian Military Intelligence (GU/GRU)

These days it is the grushniki - operatives of the intelligence directorate of the General Staff - who have brought down on Russian heads the most atrocious publicity by promising more than they could deliver in operations abroad. They have made more of a hash of it than the FSB - the domestic intelligence service … Continue reading Training School for Foreign Intelligence

The impact of an informational hurricane sweeping into Russia from the West in reaction to widespread GRU cyberwarfare operations directed at the NATO countries is still reverberating through Moscow. On 7 October Nezavisimaya Gazeta's chief economic editor, Mikhail Sergeev, published a strongly worded article entitled "Military intelligence has become an economic factor." Indeed, it has. … Continue reading Censorship or Self-Censorship on GRU?

The sensational news today is the result of investigations following on from the arrest of four grushniki (GRU operatives) who, on 13 April this year, parked their car at the back of a Marriot Hotel  loaded with interception equipment to target the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an intergovernmental institution in The Hague, … Continue reading 305 GRU Officers Outed: Inadvertent Openness by Russian Intelligence

The conflict with the West is not entirely unproductive; for historians, at least. The Russian Foreign Ministry and the Defence Ministry archivists recently pooled their efforts to publish photocopies of formerly secret documents on the evolution and conclusion of the crisis over the fate of Czechoslovakia in 1938-39. These appeared on 20 September on the … Continue reading Russian (Civilian) Foreign Intelligence Lets its Standards Drop

Although the Russian Government moved into help Assad of Syria sustain himself in power to pre-empt his removal by the opposition and thereby keep the United States at bay and deal a heavy blow to Islamic fundamentalists supported surreptitiously by Turkey, it has landed itself at the epicentre of Near Eastern politics in a way … Continue reading Russian Anxieties. War Between Iran and Israel?

The accidental downing of the Russian electronic intelligence aircraft Il-20 with fifteen crew on 18 September by Syrian air defence forces was immediately followed by claims from the Ministry of Defence to the effect that the shootdown did not result from Russian ineptitude but due to Israeli air force planes bombing the Syrians but hiding … Continue reading Another Ministry of Defence Cock-Up