Russian Special Forces - Spetsnaz GRU - Combat Training. Spetsnaz Training Association, Moscow.

2. Do you have an instructor training program?

3. Do you have any practitioners in the United States?

4. Is your system related to other Russian Martial Arts such as the Systema, Ross, or the Kadochnikov System?

5. At first sight your style resembles Chinese kung fu. Has it some Chinese origin?

You can send your questions to Mr. Alexander Popov personally by E-mail : spetsnaz@addr.com

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1. It depends on what you want to learn. If the entrenching shovel technique, the starting point should be the film “Entrenching Shovel – basic technique“, if a knife work, the film “Knife Combat - basic technique“. If you mean the system as a whole, in this case it is better to start with a film containing the elementary course of hand-to-hand fight which will be issued soon.

2. There is such a training program, but it is not in video form yet. The films on the knife fight and entrenching shovel fight released by now are dedicated to two important and rather independent branches of the hand-to-hand combat. Those two series of video films are comprehensive manuals, they allow to master all basic combat methods used with a knife and an entrenching shovel according to the version of Spetsnaz GRU. Training starts from the basic technique. No preliminaries are needed. It is quite enough to have a desire and necessary implements - a knife and (or) a entrenching shovel. Any combat knife or dagger is suitable for this purpose; as far as entrenching shovels are concerned, a lot of Internet shops sell them, they are called "spetsnaz shovel" there, the price range is from 17 äî 28 $US.

3. There are no practitioners in this system of the hand-to-hand combat anywhere outside Russia. Even in Russia there is little knowledge about this system, as during the Soviet time it was classified information. Very few specialists in complete command of this system have lived to the present time.

4. No, it is not; this combat system greatly differs from such general combat systems as ROSS, Systema, Kadochnikov's system or Combat SAMBO.
Kadochnikov's system was developed by Alexey Kadochnikov in the 70-th of the XX-th century on the base of the military hand-to hand combat and his own ideas and developments. It is worth mentioning, without diminishing Kadochnikov's merits, that he had nothing to do with the Spetsnaz. Being an officer of the Soviet, and then Russian Army, he taught theoretical mechanics at the Higher Rocket School. The ROSS system was developed by Alexander Retyunskikh in the last 90-th on the basis of SAMBO and Kadochnikov's style.

Our system according to the version of the Spetsnaz GRU, was developed in the
20-th - 30-th of the XX century in the USSR to train personnel of special reconnaissance/saboteur units of the GRU (military reconnaissance) employed for combat actions at the rear of the enemy. Such specially trained intelligence officer was able to win several armed and well-trained enemies in a hand-to-hand combat. It should be noted that within two or three years of training a practitioner in this combat system attained a much higher level than the black belt 9 dan in the Eastern Martial Arts.

5. It must be admitted that a great contribution into the development of this system was made by Chinese masters of Kung Fu from the province of Guangdong. My principal teacher was master Sang Ming Chong who served in the GRU staff for a long time. However, this system was not based only on one particular Chinese style. It is a combined style that was developed and tested in combat conditions many times over 20 years on the basis of the best hand-to-hand combat styles of Russia and South China. It pays a great attention to cold-steel work, including work with the knife and the entrenching shovel. A unique system of pistol firing with both hands (so-called Macedonian style), a method to escape bullet hits ("pendulum swing") and some other similar methods have been also developed. By the way, my teacher, Sang Ming Chong, being an outstanding master of Hung Gar style, was rather skeptical about the condition of the oriental Martial Arts in the second part of the 20-th century. He thought that they were loosing its main component, i.e. combat aspect. The Martial Arts are changing into either sports or something which only resembles the Martial Arts, not being them in reality. Methods shown by so-called masters are not applicable in a combat, as they contradict existing combat principles and regularities.

Alexander Popov

**Russian Special Forces * Spetsnaz GRU * Combat Training**

RUSSIAN COMBAT