ALFA (special unit)

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Special group "A" ALFA

ALFA coat of arms. Caption: "Antiterror"

coat of arms
Lineup 1974
Country RussiaRussia Russian Federation
Branch of service Special forces
Type Counterterrorism
Insinuation Emblem of Federal security service.svg FSB (secret service)

ALFA or Alpha is a special unit of the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB with the focus on counter-terrorism .

assignment

The unit specializes in anti-terrorism with hostage rescue , sniper services , personal protection and aircraft hijacking situations .

organization

Under the impact of the Munich Massacre during the 1972 Olympic Games was in the Soviet Union of the frame 7. Department of the KGB , the Group A established ( Russian Группа "А", commonly known as "Alfa", Russ. Альфа called). However, their existence only became known through the press after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s . Little is known about their structure. Their strength is estimated at around 700 men.

In contrast to OMON , ALFA is recruited exclusively from officers.

Recruitment and training

Members of the unit during an exercise

The training of the ALFA troops is considered to be particularly tough and stress-intensive, both mentally and physically. Little is known about the content, duration and course of the training.

history

Vladimir Putin visits ALFA members in Gudermes

When four members of the Soviet embassy were taken hostage in Beirut in 1985, ALFA was dispatched to Lebanon. After a hostage was killed, ALFA in turn kidnapped four members of the terrorist group, killed one and sent parts of his body to the hostage-takers. The three surviving Soviet citizens were quickly released.

During the communist August coup in Moscow in 1991, ALFA made a historic decision by refusing to be used as a political instrument and, as ordered , to storm the parliament building in which the liberal forces around Boris Yeltsin had holed up. The coup with the aim of reversing the perestroika begun by Gorbachev failed.

In 1991, ALFA soldiers took part in the so-called Vilnius Blood Sunday .

In addition, the unit refused the order to storm the lawfully incumbent parliament in October 1993, when President Yeltsin demanded the storming of opposition strongholds in his fight against the parliament, in which the communists held the majority of the votes (cf.Russian constitutional crisis 1993 ). Ultimately, a tank battalion of the regular army carried out this order.

In recent history, ALFA has been increasingly used in special operations to stabilize the situation in the Russian Republic of Chechnya , namely in the 1995 hostage-taking of Budyonnovsk , the hostage-taking in Moscow's Dubrovka Theater in 2002 and the hostage-taking of Beslan in 2004.

The sister unit of ALFA is called Wympel .

ALFA in Ukraine

There is also an ALFA special unit in Ukraine . She is subordinate to the secret service SBU .

See also

Web links

Commons : ALFA  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barry Davies, Richard Tomlinson: The Spycraft Manual. Zenith (2005, 108).
  2. ↑ KGB reportedly gave Arab terrorists a taste of brutality to free diplomats. In: Los Angeles Times. January 7, 1986, accessed June 26, 2014 .
  3. ↑ / Russian special forces protest over Lithuania's political repressions (RT)
  4. ↑ Под отель "Днепр" приехал командир Асавелюк, который руководил снайперами на Институтской) , LB ( ОБ on April 1, 2014 ) , LB.