The Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, commonly known as the Special Operations Forces (Russian: Силы специальных операций; ССО, tr. Sily spetsial’nykh operatsiy; SSO) are strategic-level special forces under the Special Operations Forces Command (Russian: командование сил специальных операций; KCCO, tr. Komandovanie sil spetsial’nalnykh operatsii; KSSO or KSO) of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. It is also a structural and an independent unit of the Armed Forces.
The first units of what would become the Special Operations Forces were transferred from the GRU in 2009 as part of the continuing 2008 Russian military reform. The Special Operations Forces Command was established in 2012 and announced in March 2013 by the Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov. According to Gerasimov, the SOF was designed as a strategic-level asset, elite special operations force units of the KSSO whose primary missions would be foreign interventions including counter-proliferation, foreign internal defense operations and undertaking the most complex special operations and clandestine missions for protecting interests of the Russian Federation.
SOF are distinct from the Spetsnaz GRU that until 2010 were under the Main Intelligence Directorate and whose subsequent subordination was left unclear until 2013 where the decision was reversed and GRU special forces units were reassigned to GRU divisions and placed under GRU authority again. Russia's SOF are manned exclusively by professional personnel hired on contract, of which all are full-time servicemen consisting of commissioned officers and regular soldiers.
On 26 February 2015, President Vladimir Putin decreed that 27 February be the Day of the SOF, according to multiple Russian official news agencies (albeit not acknowledged formally), to mark the establishment of Russian control over the building of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in Simferopol, Crimea on 27 February 2014.
