GRU isn't as well-known a baleful acronym as KGB or FSB. But Russia's military intelligence service is attracting increasing attention as allegations mount of devious and deadly operations on and off the field of battle.
FILE - This Tuesday, July 31, 2018 file photo, shows the building of the Russian military intelligence service, located at 22 Kirova Street, Khimki, which was named in an indictment announced by a U.S. federal grand jury as part of a probe into alleged Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, in Khimki outside Moscow, Russia. Russia's military intelligence service GRU is attracting increasing attention as allegations mount of devious and deadly operations on and off the field of battle. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
Alexander Zemlianichenko
Formally named the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, the agency is almost universally referred to by its former acronym GRU.
It is the most shadowy of Russia's secret services. When its previous director Igor Sergun died in 2016, the Kremlin announcement was so terse that it gave neither the date, cause or place of death.
This combination photo made available by the Metropolitan Police on Wednesday Sept. 5, 2018, shows Alexander Petrov, left, and Ruslan Boshirov. British prosecutors have charged two Russian men, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, with the nerve agent poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury. They are charged in absentia with conspiracy to murder, attempted murder and use of the nerve agent Novichok. (Metropolitan Police via AP)
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Britain claims that two GRU agents carried out this spring's attack with the nerve agent Novichok on Sergei Skripal, a former GRU officer who became a British double agent, and his daughter. Both survived the poisoning in the city of Salisbury, but three months later two area residents were sickened by the same nerve agent, one of them fatally — it is believed they found the discarded bottle that had carried the Skripals' poison.
This week's claim came less than two months after the U.S. indicted 12 alleged GRU agents for hacking into the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic Party and releasing tens of thousands of private communications, part of a sweeping conspiracy by the Kremlin to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election.
This still taken from CCTV and issued by the Metropolitan Police in London on Wednesday Sept. 5, 2018, shows Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov on Fisherton Road, Salisbury, England on March 4, 2018. British prosecutors have charged two Russian men, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, with the nerve agent poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English city of Salisbury. They are charged in absentia with conspiracy to murder, attempted murder and use of the nerve agent Novichok. (Metropolitan Police via AP)
FILE - In this Friday, Feb. 23, 2018 file photo, Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, listens to the Defense Minister as he arrives to attend a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow, Russia. The GRU is one arm of Russia's extensive security and intelligence apparatus, which also includes the Foreign Intelligence Service, known as the SVR, and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, which conducts domestic intelligence and counterintelligence. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
Alexander Zemlianichenko
The GRU is one arm of Russia's extensive security and intelligence apparatus, which also includes the Foreign Intelligence Service, known as the SVR, and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, which conducts domestic intelligence and counterintelligence. The SVR and FSB were spun off from the KGB after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A former KGB agent, Vladimir Putin ran the FSB before ascending to the presidency.
And as president, Putin names the top brass in the GRU. Of all the agencies, the FSB looms largest in Russians' minds because it hunts domestic threats. The GRU, created under Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, has a more ruthless reputation, but focuses its energies on foreign threats.
FILE - This Tuesday, May 14, 2013 file photo shows the main building of the Russian Federal Security Services, FSB, reflected in a shop's glass door on Lubyanka Square in Moscow, Russia. The GRU is one arm of Russia's extensive security and intelligence apparatus, which also includes the Foreign Intelligence Service, known as the SVR, and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, which conducts domestic intelligence and counterintelligence. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev, File)
A beluga whale first spotted in Arctic Norway in 2019 with an apparent Russian-made harness and alleged to have come from a Russian military facility has been spotted off Sweden's west coast, Norwegian authorities say.
