Last April, Vladimir Putin visited Bauman Moscow State Technical University, located on the banks of the Yauza River, to boast about space missions to the moon and Mars. What the Kremlin’s readout conveniently omitted was that the university also houses a secret faculty, Department 4, or “Special Training,” where students are quietly groomed for careers in the GRU - Russia’s military intelligence directorate. Because nothing says “competitive” like training operatives to hack parliaments and meddle in elections.
More than 2,000 internal documents, obtained by a consortium including the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, the Insider, Delfi, and VSquare, reveal the existence of this pipeline from one of Russia’s most prestigious institutions directly into its military intelligence apparatus. The files, covering several years up to 2025, include course syllabuses, exam records, and career assignments tracing students from classroom hacking exercises to postings in notorious cyber-units like Fancy Bear and Sandworm.
Department 4 is divided into three specialist streams, with the most prominent being the “Special Reconnaissance Service” (code 093400). The GRU exerts direct control over recruitment and grading, sending its own officers to conduct exams and oversee placements. The department is led by Lt Col Kirill Stupakov, a signals intelligence officer who signed a three-year contract in 2022 with GRU Unit 45807. His teaching materials include a catalogue of deception: smoke detectors that are cameras, devices that log keystrokes, and monitor cables that silently capture screenshots.
Another instructor is Viktor Netyksho, a western-sanctioned major general who commanded Unit 26165 (Fancy Bear), whose officers were indicted by the US Department of Justice for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election. Core courses include “Defence against technical reconnaissance,” spanning 144 hours across two semesters, covering password attacks, software vulnerabilities, and trojans. To pass, students must carry out practical penetration tests and develop their own computer virus. Separate modules cover the structure of US and British military intelligence, and the use of western intelligence in the war in Ukraine.
The curriculum also covers information warfare, with advanced students required to complete a seminar on developing a disinformation campaign, creating a social media video using “manipulation, pressure and hidden propaganda.” Teaching materials saturate students with Kremlin orthodoxy: the war in Ukraine was “inevitable”; “nationalists and neo-Nazis” are in power; Russians in the Donbas face “genocide.”
Among the 69 students who graduated in spring 2024 was Daniil Porshin, who maintained near-perfect grades while playing for the faculty football team. Upon graduation, he was assigned to Fancy Bear. Fifteen others from his cohort were directed into GRU units, including one posted to Unit 74455 in Anapa - home to Sandworm, accused of targeting Ukraine’s power grid in 2015, Emmanuel Macron’s 2017 presidential campaign, the 2018 South Korean Winter Olympics, and the British investigation into the Salisbury nerve agent poisoning.
Not every student makes the cut: dozens have been dismissed, with evaluations like “insufficient understanding of how to carry out a remote network attack.” The latest cohort won’t graduate until the end of the 2027 academic year, suggesting Russia is ramping up hybrid attacks on European allies. Insiders note that Bauman is just one piece of the puzzle - another university, Mirea, is even more crucial for training hackers. Because when you’re building a spy pipeline, you need multiple assembly lines.