Mark Galeotti is a scholar of Russian security with a career spanning academia, government and business, a prolific author and frequent media commentator. He heads the Mayak Intelligence consultancy and is an Honorary Professor at University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies as well as holding fellowships with RUSI and the Institute of International Relations Prague. He has been Professor of Global Affairs at New York University, a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and a Visiting Professor at Rutgers-Newark and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

Introduction: overview; background in Russian history and culture
The Spetsnaz Tradition: special units of the Bolshevik Red Guard, and behind-the-lines NKVD operations in World War II /Cold Warriors: foundation by GRU, 1950
Operations 1960s-70s: Angola, Czechoslovakia, etc, and order-of-battle 1980
Operations in Afghanistan, and order-of-battle
Spetsnaz after the USSR: the turmoil of the 1990s
Tajikistan and Moldova, imitation units in post-Soviet states
Operations in Chechnya, the Chechen Spetsnaz
Modern Spetsnaz: increasing strength and importance
Naval Spetsnaz, and order-of-battle 2013
Special Weapons
Index