Main Directorate of Intelligence (Ukraine)
Ukrainian Military Intelligence Agency
The Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine (Ukrainian: Головне управління розвідки Міністерства оборони України, ГУР МОУ, romanized: Holovne upravlinnia rozvidky Ministerstva oborony Ukrainy, GUR / HUR MO), also known in English as the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU), is the military intelligence service of the Ukrainian government. It is an agency of the Ministry of Defence, not the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Similar to the GRU, both its predecessor and Russian counterpart, the HUR is not restricted to intelligence-gathering but also carries out military operations and contains Spetsnaz units under its operational control.
History
The agency was established from the existing intelligence assets of the Kyiv, Odesa and Carpathian military districts of the Soviet Armed Forces and its Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the independence of Ukraine.
The Intelligence Directorate of the General Headquarters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was established in February 1992. Based on a presidential decree issued on September 7, 1992, the Strategic Military Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence was created. The existence of two separate agencies with similar responsibilities, and reporting to different authorities, hampered the development of an effective military intelligence system.
On July 6, 1993, the Decree of the President of Ukraine ordered the merging of the two agencies to form the Main Military Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence. It was renamed the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, or Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU) for short, on April 4, 1994.
On March 22, 2001, the Ukrainian parliament (Rada) ratified the Law of Ukraine "On Intelligence Agencies of Ukraine".
The public source identifies “Main Directorate of Intelligence (Ukraine)” as ukrainian Military Intelligence Agency. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Main, Directorate and Intelligence.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2497240. Authority coordinates are 50.471, 30.529. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1992, 1993, 1994 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “Main Directorate of Intelligence (Ukraine)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.