As the Russian drawdown from Syria continues, more information continues to emerge about the forces Moscow had committed to shoring up the Assad regime. One telling aspect is how involved Russia’s ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Russia's Spetsnaz forces are often depicted as a kind of Russian super troops. But the mythology around the Spetsnaz is as often ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Russian Spetsnaz troops march through Red Square in a Victory Day military parade, May 9, 2021.Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images Amid ...

Spetsnaz is an umbrella term for any special forces in Russian, literally "special purpose forces". Historically, the term referred to the military special units controlled by the military ...

Russian soldiers were locked in a room with a rabid dog and made to kill it with a shovel, during their gruelling training, a defector claimed. Russia ’s special forces are the elite of the Kremlin’s ...

VLADIMIR Putin has unleashed his ruthless Spetsnaz special forces unit who train with live bullets and kill dogs with shovels into Ukraine to execute Volodymyr Zelensky as the invasion continues to ...

January 23, 2012: Russia's special operations units have benefited greatly from the major reforms being instituted in the armed forces during the last decade. Airborne Forces (paratroopers) and ...

April 10, 2014: The United States is studying recent Russian special operations techniques used (and still being used) in Crimea and the Ukraine. American intelligence realized early on that this was ...

A Russian commando grips a combat knife, the kind of close-quarters steel that helped make Kizlyar blades part of the Spetsnaz legend.

The following is an excerpt from Mark Galeotti's book, "Putin's Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine." Most countries' special forces emphasize physical fitness, determination and aggression. Russia's ...