President Vladimir Putin may be having a hard time in his invasion of Ukraine, but could yet call on some of the most fearsome shock troops in the world to turn the tide in his favour - Russia's elite and bloodthirsty Spetsnaz units.
The Spetnaz are Russia's special forces and are currently numbered at around 15,000 split between army and naval units. The soldiers are as elite as they come and all have undergone a medieval training program with a 90% attrition rate to get where they are.
Spetsnaz training is widely considered to be the toughest in the world and is designed to put recruits through more pain than they've ever been through before.In order to qualify for the Spetsnaz, recruits must be trained up in a variety of modern (and not so modern) warfare skills.
These include explosives training, marksmanship, counter-terrorism, brutal hand-to-hand combat and even underwater fighting.
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