General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
Military staff of the Russian Armed Forces
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| August 5 2024 | Ukrainian troops killed 5 Russian saboteurs from the 'Senezh' unit in Chernihiv Oblast, believed to be conducting reconnaissance for a potential Russian offensive into Semenivka. |
| February 2022 | Involved in the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, conducting covert operations targeting critical military infrastructure and performing reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines. |
| August 25 2020 | Joint Russian-Syrian operation killed 327 militants and destroyed multiple ISIS infrastructure targets in response to an IED explosion on 18 August that killed Major General Vyacheslav Gladkikh. |
| March 25 2019 | SOF and Russian Air Force eliminated over 30 terrorists in a special operation retaliating for a terrorist attack in late February 2019 that killed 2 Russian servicemen. |
| 2018 | Major General Valery Flyustikov becomes commander of the Russian Special Operations Forces and remains incumbent as of the current date. |
| January 12 2018 | SOF eliminated a militant group responsible for a mortar attack on Khmeimim Air Base on 31 December 2017 that killed two Russian soldiers. They tracked the militants to their base camp near Idlib and destroyed the entire group. |
| December 11 2017 | Provided top-level security for an unannounced visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Khmeimim Air Base in Syria, covering dangerous directions from sea, air, and land. |
| December 2 2017 | An unnamed mountain in the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania was officially named 'Mountain of Special Operations Forces'. |
| September 20 2017 | SOF rescued a 29-man Russian military police unit trapped by jihadists in an Idlib de-escalation zone. The rescue operation involved Syrian and Russian Air Force, with three SOF operators injured but all 29 men safely extracted. |
| August 16 2017 | A 4-5 man SOF unit was ambushed by 40 Islamic State terrorists in Akerbat. Lance Corporal Denis Portnyagin single-handedly killed 14 terrorists after his unit was injured, and was awarded Hero of the Russian Federation. |
| May 10 2017 | President Vladimir Putin awarded medals to four SOF officers for extraordinary courage in Syria. A 16-man unit successfully repelled attacks by over 300 jihadists without losses. Lieutenant Colonel Danila was awarded Hero of the Russian Federation. |
| March 2016 | During the Battle of Palmyra, Senior Lieutenant Alexander Prokhorenko was killed after ordering an airstrike on his own position when surrounded by ISIL fighters. He was posthumously awarded Hero of the Russian Federation. |
| 2015 | Major General Aleksandr Matovnikov takes over command of the Russian Special Operations Forces, serving until 2018. |
| December 2015 | Began covert combat operations in Syria. |
| November 2015 | SOF recovered the flight recorder of a downed Su-24M and conducted a combat search and rescue (CSAR) operation to rescue the surviving crew of a downed Mi-8AMTsh helicopter. |
| 2014 | Major General Alexey Dyumin assumes command of the Russian Special Operations Forces, serving until 2015. |
| March 18 2014 | Undercover SOF operatives captured a military base in Simferopol during the Crimean annexation. |
| February 27 2014 | Russian special operators seized the Crimean parliament, marking their first documented deployment. Unidentified armed men began blockading Ukrainian bases in Crimea. |
| April 2013 | Conducted special tactics exercise in the Elbrus mountains at 4,500 meters altitude, practicing military transport and air insertion of personnel and cargo. |
| March 15 2013 | Began formation of the Special Operations Center in Kubinka-2, planned to accommodate around 500 professional soldiers, to be completed by the end of 2013. |
| March 6 2013 | General Valery Gerasimov publicly announced the creation of the Special Operations Forces during a meeting with foreign military attaches in Moscow. |
| 2012 | Special Operations Directorate was reorganized as Special Operations Command, with plans to expand to 9 special purpose brigades. |
This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia article Special Operations Forces (Russia), which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.