[1][2] The Unit is commanded by Maj. Gen. Andrei Vladimirovich Averyanov [d] and based at the headquarters of the 161st Special Purpose Specialist Training Center in eastern Moscow.
[1] In August 2024, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) posted a $10,000,000 reward for information leading to the locations of Vladislav Yevgenyevich Borovkov, Denis Igorevich Denisenko, Yuriy Fedorovich Denisov, Dmitriy Yuryevich Goloshubov, Nikolay Aleksandrovich Korchagin, and Amin Timovich Stigal.
[10][11] Unit 29155 was linked — by the investigative Bellingcat website using OSINT (open-source intelligence) — to the attempted assassinations of Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev in April 2015 and the former GRU Colonel Sergei Skripal in March 2018, both possibly overseen by the same agent.
[12] According to Ben Macintyre in the London Times in December 2019, the unit is believed to be responsible for a destabilisation campaign in Moldova and a failed pro-Serbian coup plot in Montenegro in 2016 including an attempt to assassinate the Prime Minister Milo Đukanović and occupy the parliament building by force.
[16] Andrej Babiš, the prime minister of Czechia, announced on 17 April 2021 that Unit 29155 was behind the 2014 Vrbětice ammunition warehouses explosions, which resulted in the death of two Czech citizens and damage exceeding CZK 1 billion.
[20][21] In 2020, a CIA assessment reported that Unit 29155 operated a Russian bounty program that offered cash rewards to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. and other coalition soldiers in Afghanistan.
[29][30] In April 2024, 60 Minutes, Der Spiegel and The Insider published a joint investigation which alleges that Unit 29155 is connected to cases of "Havana syndrome", where U.S. employees or their family members have experienced symptoms in the range from pain and ringing in the ears to cognitive dysfunction.
[33] Beginning in 2020 to support Russia's efforts in the Russo-Ukrainian War, many cyber attacks on Ukraine and the countries of NATO allegedly were conducted by GRU 161st Specialist Training Center (Unit 29155), which is responsible for computer network operations against global targets for the purposes of espionage, sabotage, and reputational harm since at least 2020, that often used multiple families of destructive wiper malware including "WhisperGate."