Spetsnaz
post-Soviet military units / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Spetsnaz is an umbrella term (used for many different things) for special forces in Russian language and is used in numerous post-Soviet states.
This article relies largely or entirely on a single source. (June 2020) |
Historically, the term meant a special operations units controlled by the main military intelligence service GRU (Spetsnaz GRU).[1] It also describes task forces of other ministries (such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs' ODON and Ministry of Emergency Situations' special rescue unit) in post-Soviet countries. Russian special forces wear different berets depending on the branch of the armed forces they belong to.
As Spetsnaz is a Russian term, it mostly means the special forces of Russia, but other post-Soviet states often refer to their special forces units by the name as well, since these nations also got their special purpose units from the old Soviet security agencies.[2]