The Spetsnaz GRU, the first spetsnaz force in the Soviet Union, formed in 1949 as the military force of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), the foreign military-intelligence agency of the Soviet Armed Forces.

The GRU was created under its current name and form by Joseph Stalin in February 1942, less than a year after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany.

Jul 30, 2016 · It’s a bat covering a globe and it's the symbol of the GRU Spetsnaz, elite units of Russia’s largest military intelligence agency. While some people have also noticed this resemblance (because it's hard to ignore A RUSSIAN ORGANIZATION THAT HAS A BATMAN SYMBOL) no one has come up with a solid explanation for why the two designs look so similar.

Jul 11, 2024 · The GRU Spetsnaz are special covert forces under the Russian Federation’s Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces (GU/GRU). The GU is Russia’s main wing of foreign military intelligence, and reports directly to the Minister of …

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) and still commonly known by its previous abbreviati...

Spetsnaz GRU is an elite military formation under the control of the military intelligence service GRU. It was the first Soviet/Russian spetsnaz (special forces) force, more than two decades older than its KGB /FSB and MVD counterparts.

GRU is the English transliteration of the Russian acronym ГРУ, which stands for "Гла́вное Разве́дывательное Управле́ние" (Glavnoe Razvedyvatel'noe Upravlenie), meaning Main Intelligence Directorate. The full name is GRU GSh (GRU GenShtaba, i.e. "GRU of …

The symbol of Russian intelligence is a bat, which for a long time denoted belonging not only to the GRU, but also to special units of the KGB. This emblem has remained relevant to this day, despite its recent official replacement by the display of a red carnation with grenades.

Apr 24, 2009 · According to some sources, GRU has six times as many agents in foreign countries as the SVR, which is the KGB’s foreign intelligence successor. It also maintains significant signals intelligence and imagery reconnaissance and satellite imagery capabilities. The GRU was created on October 21, 1918.

Jul 13, 2018 · Founded not long after the Bolshevik revolution, it plays a much larger role than its rough U.S. equivalent, the Defense Intelligence Agency. The GRU's insignia, a bat shadowing …