In the pantheon of Russian intelligence, the KGB is king. It fills the ranks of cinematic and literary villains, from John Le Carré’s spymaster Karla to the sleeper agents of “The Americans”, a TV show. But a different set of spies is now hogging the limelight. The GRU, the intelligence arm of Russia’s armed forces, has been caught up in almost all the crises involving the country in recent years, from the annexation of Crimea, to the downing of a passenger aircraft over Ukraine, to the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal, a former spy, in Salisbury. Who are these hyperactive military spooks?
The Bolsheviks created a military intelligence service in the earliest days of the Soviet Union, settling on the name GRU (from the Russian for “Main Intelligence Directorate”) in 1942. While the agency that became the KGB (“Committee for State Security”) was housed in striking headquarters close to the foreign ministry, earning the label “near neighbours”, the GRU became the “distant neighbours”, exiled to a small, shabby house much further away.
