and develop separate, individual Spetsnaz in all military districts. The GRU responded with a major investment in a new headquarters at “the aquarium,” the top security compound on Moscow’s Khodinka military airport, and in the creation of a control center, or Senezh, at Solnechnogorsk, just northwest of the capital. The GRU Spetsnaz consists of eight brigades, of which three are held in reserve. All are thought to be slightly
under-strength and lack their own helicopter support. At the end of February 2014, all were believed to have participated in the invasion of Crimea, their movement from their bases apparently unnoticed by the West. In what was to be a textbook example of a SOF operation, Spetsnaz acted in a battlefield reconnaissance role. Whereas conventional Spetsnaz training implied penetration deep behind NATO lines to seek and
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