Just some intersting videos about Spetsnaz I found

Spetsnaz FSB in action

Pirate wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI5LXPR8GF0

Spetsnaz FSB in action

thanks for the link. great quality!!

Sukhoi37_Terminator wrote:

Pirate wrote:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI5LXPR8GF0

Spetsnaz FSB in action

thanks for the link. great quality!!

Not at all! You`re welcome people

Yeah i watched all the weaponology stuff and your link too, bro. Thanks for sharing! Good quality vids and......<3 luv Spetsnazs <3 They are one of the best task forces units

Bro those videos are awesome
Hm Does the Spetsnazs VV belongs to Federal Security Service units or Ministry of Interior units??
And are the FSB spetsnazs unit better trained then the ones from the Ministry of Interior ?

milky_candy_sugar wrote:Bro those videos are awesome
Hm Does the Spetsnazs VV belongs to Federal Security Service units or Ministry of Interior units??
And are the FSB spetsnazs unit better trained then the ones from the Ministry of Interior ?

Well, In Russia we have 4 kinds of Spetsnaz: army spetsnaz, Ministry of Interior spetsnaz, Spetsnaz GRU (military intelligence) and FSB spetsnaz. The best of the best is Alpha (Alfa) Group spetsnaz of FSB. I know nothing About Spetsnaz GRU, because it is very secret unit...

Pirate wrote:

Well, In Russia we have 4 kinds of Spetsnaz: army spetsnaz, Ministry of Interior spetsnaz, Spetsnaz GRU (military intelligence) and FSB spetsnaz. The best of the best is Alpha (Alfa) Group spetsnaz of FSB. I know nothing About Spetsnaz GRU, because it is very secret unit...

GRU Spetsnaz is the special unit of FSB, one and the same. Alpha is an MVD spetsnaz, it is a team trained in counter terrorism but it is really a glorified SWAT team. GRU Spetsnaz are the legendary elite of the CCCP and still are today. VDV Spetsnaz is the second best after GRU. GRU mostly comes from VDV anyway.

I think that there is some misunderstanding here. Any unit can form a special purpose group and call it "spetsnaz". Nowadays there are so many "spetsnaz" groups out there that I would not in the least be surprized if one day I saw a stroibat (construction battalion) "spetsnaz" :-)

The real Spetnaz have their origin in the war against Napoleon when for the first time Denis.V. Davydov wrote a book entitled Опыт теории партизанского действия (Practive and Theory of the use of Partisans). This book was the first theoretical analyses of the use of special forces independelty from the main military forces i.e., not in direct support and/or coordination with the regular army. In the past, Russia did have various groups which engagned in deep reconaissance and sabotage, Cossaks for example, but the work of Davydov for the first time offered a model as to how such forces might be used by the high command during a regular war.

The civil war which followed the 1917 Revolution was often fought without clear fronts and in a partisan-like way. This experience was largely overlooked until WWII when the Soviet Army re-created a special department of the high command which was in charge of partisans.

Please forgive the long intro, but this is important to explain the following: both the military and the NKVD had partisan units and, therefore, "real" spetsnaz units in the Soviet Union were either miltiary or what became later the KGB.

The military had special force brigades and special reconaissance units. These are what is called Spetsnaz GRU. The GRU also has special separate Spetsnaz companies which are staffed exclusively by experienced officers and NCOs aged between 25-30 years old. Those are the most highly trained and secret units who are never shown in Russian photos or videos. However, a Byelorussian TV documenary has once shown such a separate GRU company from Byelorussia.

The KGB also had special forces units, often taken form the elite border guards.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs eventually had one special division the "Dzerzhinsky" division.

In Afghanistan, various special units were used including the units "Zenit", "Kaskad", "Koblat", a GRU battalion formed with soliders from Central Asia, special KGB operation-battle group (ОБГ) which were mobile direct action forces.

The so-called "Alpha" (it is really called simple "A") was created in the wake of the 1972 Munich terrorist crisis and it is a purely ant-terrorist unit. It is NOT a military unit. There is also a group called "Vympel" which was created on the basis of the KGB special unit "Kaskad" which itself was created at a secret tranining program called the КУОС (Officer staff improvement course). In reality, this was the Spetsnaz of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate of the KGB (ПГУ). This is one of the very few units which features officers fully trained both as intelligence agents (spies) and elite commandoes.

The VDV are NOT spetsnaz, but they have their own reconaissance units which are similar to the Spetsnaz GRU and are among the best recon units on the planet. It is true that Spetsnaz GRU and VDV personnel train together at the VDV training centre in Ryazan.

I forgot to mention that the Russian Navy also has dedicated and specialized Naval Spetsnaz units in each Fleet (battalion or company size depending on the Fleet)

Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has engaged on development of all sorts of "spetsnaz" units which have been, and are still, used in various conflicts such as Chechnia and Daghestan. But this is a relatively new phenomenon and it does not have the history and tradition which the Spetsnaz GRU and Spetsnaz FSB have.

Finally, Russia has been reviving an old pre-1917 tradition of creating special forces based on ethnic groups such as the 2 Chechen Spetsnaz battalions and the various Cossack units. Time will show whether this experiment is successful or not.

And which of those units is "the best"?

That is a wrong question. This depends on the best for what purpose. These are all different units with VERY different training and missions and comparing them makes really no sense. It also overlooks other sometimes very highly trained forces like some independent mootr-rifle briages (including peacekeeping ones), Boder Guard or Naval Infantry which have highly trained units and a prestegious history.

HTH

Farhad

PS: I have recently watched a two-part series on 'Spetsnaz' which is already several years old and which I downloaded from rutracker.org. In the series, you can see footage and interviews from so-called "spetsnaz" MVD troops which are tasked with putting down rebellions in labor camps... Yeah, these guys also wear masks and have a 'spetsnaz' sign on their backs. That is, of course, utterly ridiculous. The thought of a "вертухай-спецназ" ("Spetsnaz-hack" or "spetsnaz-screw") is deeply offensive to any real Spetnaz soldier. It is worth remembering here that when Eltsin disbanded the special KGB unit "Vympel" as an act of revenge because Vympel let Rutskoi, Hasbulatov and the rest of the folks in the White House out instead of killing them as ordered, the vast majority of them refused to be re-subordinated to the MVD ('we are not cops'). So you can easily imagine how offensive and utterly ridiculous the idea of a "вертухай-спецназ" would be to such men.

Pirate wrote:

This is the FSB Spetsnaz

Well, the FSB special forces and the MVD special forces are doing well under Medvedev and Putin. They get lots of money, high-tech gear, they get brand new barraks, top of the line training centers and lots, LOTS, of visibility in the media. Almost every time you see something about "Spetsnaz" in Russia now its all about cops. There would be nothing wrong with that if that was not made at the expense of the military special forces who are gradually but surely being weakened. Not only was an entire Spetsnaz GRU Brigade disbanded, but there was so serious talk about disbanding the GRU itself (this seems to have been put on hold now).

Now that General Shamanov is the C-in-C of the Airborne Troops, I have some hope that this nonsense will be stopped, but I am not holding my breath: his main priority will be to save the VDV units from being disbanded under the cover of "reform". The crazies in the Kremlin even wanted to disband the 106th (Tula) Guards Airborne Division! It appears that Shamanov has, so far, prevented this folly.

Furthermore, I have no reason to trust a civilian Minister of Defense like Serdyukov or a Chief of General Staff like Nikolai Makarov who somehow managed to avoid any real combat in his entire career and who has all the characteristics of a puppet for Serdyukov.

My feeling is that the regime in power has no need for a powerful military and even though common sense and the recent experience clearly show that Airborne and Special forces are amongst the best trained and most capable forces in the Russian military, and even though they would be the key to any foreseeable military conflict, the Kremlin wants cops, cops and more cops.

There are some excellent people in the FSB special forces. A good friend of mine, a (now retired) Colonel in the former PGU KGB, commanded a "Kaskad" unit in Afghanistan and I met quite a few of his men and I was very impressed by their training and skills. There is no doubt that many their current successors are as dedicated and professional as they were. The same might even be true of the MDV Spetsnaz, but none of them will ever be a substitute for the Spetsnaz GRU which truly represents a strategic asset in the defense of Russia. It is a crying shame that the current regime does not understand this. As usual, it will take some disaster, some bloodbath, for the rulers to realize that a country like Russia needs the Spetsnaz GRU.

I expect to see many more videos, movies, songs and books about the 'heroic' Spetsnaz FSB and MVD in the coming years

Interesting thread.

To get it up to date as far as I know the current setup is that GRU spetsnaz units are now split amongst the 4 military districts, and are under district control rather than GRU control.

The GRU is still responsible for training and equipping the units, but they no longer command them.