GRU structure *
The chief of the GRU is subordinate only to the Chief of the General Staff and the Minister of Defense and has no direct connection to the political leadership of the country. Unlike the SVR Director, whom the President sees every Monday, the chief of the military intelligence does not have “his own hour”, a specific agenda time to report to the President of the country. The existing distribution system, that is, the high command obtaining intelligence information and analysis, deprives politicians with direct access to the GRU.
On 28 August 2001 Nezavisimaya Gazeta published an article by Stanislav Lekarev [entitled] “Foreign Intelligence is Swallowing Up Military [Intelligence]” in which it stated that Sergey Ivanov, who had just been appointed to the post of Minister of Defense, had decided to replace the heads of six of the 12 subunits of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff of the Armed Forces with officials from a “competing firm”, the SVR. In the process General Staff veterans reacted badly to the appointment of a SVR general, which has never had such subunits in its structure, as the head of communications intelligence, which controls special sites in Cuba, Vietnam, and several other countries. In addition, the restructuring affected several key subunits such as a Main Directorate, the Personnel Directorate, and the Organization-Mobilization Directorate.
Source: the diagram in a NVO Nezavisimaya Voyennaya Gazeta [Independent Military Observer] article “Two Kinds of Russian Intelligence are being unified”
The GRU structure in Soviet times
The First Directorate (agent intelligence)
had five directorates, each responsible for its set of European countries.
Each directorate had county sections
The Second Directorate (frontal intelligence)
The Third Directorate (Asian countries)
The Fourth [Directorate] (Africa and the Middle East)
The Fifth [Directorate]. Control of operational-tactical intelligence (intelligence at military facilities)
Army intelligence subunits were subordinate to this directorate. Naval intelligence was subordinate to the Second Directorate of the [Main] Navy Staff) which in turn was subordinate to the Fifth Directorate of the GRU. The Directorate was the coordinating center for thousands of intelligence structures in the army (from intelligence directorates of [military] districts to the special departments of [military] units). Technical services were communications centers and the cipher service, the computer center, a special archive, material technical and financial support service, the Directorate of Planning and Oversight, and also the Personnel Directorate. There was a division of special intelligence in the Directorate overseen by Spetsnaz.
The Sixth Directorate (electronic and ?? intelligence). It included the Space Reconnaissance Center on Volokolamskoe Highway, the so-called “Facility K-500”. Sovinformsputnik was the official GRU agency for commerce in satellite photography. Special OSNAZ subunits were in the Directorate.
The Seventh Directorate (responsible for NATO). It had six territorial directorates [SIC].
The Eighth Directorate (operations against specially selected countries)
The Ninth Directorate (military technologies)
The Tenth Directorate (military economics, military production and sales, economic security)
The Eleventh Directorate (strategic nuclear forces)
The Twelfth Directorate
The Administrative Technical Directorate
The Finance Directorate
The Operational Technical Directorate
The Cryptanalysis Service
The Military Diplomatic Academy (colloquially, "the Conservatory"), located the Oktyabr'skoe Pole Station of the Moscow Metro
The First Department of the GRU (the production of forged documents)
The Eighth GRU Department of the GRU (security of internal communications)
The GRU Archives Department
Two scientific research institutes
Spetsnaz
These subunits are the elite of the army markedly exceeding the level of training and weaponry of the Airborne Forces and the "palace units". Spetsnaz brigades are the forge of the intelligence personnel: a candidate to be a student in the "Conservatory" must be at least a captain and have served five to seven years in the spetsnaz. Traditionally the correlation between GRU and KGB (now the SVR) residencies was and remains approximately six to one in favor of "pure intelligence".
* Modern structure of Intelligence headquarters
by General Staff of Armed forces forms
a state secrecy. Presented here structure was compounded on the basis of Viktor
Suvorov book and publications in press.
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