The Ninth Chief Directorate (also nicknamed ''Devyatka'' (russian: девятка) of the KGB was the organization responsible for providing

bodyguard A bodyguard (or close protection officer/operative) is a type of security guard, government law enforcement officer, or servicemember who protects a person or a group of people — usually witnesses, high-ranking public officials or officers, ...

services to the principal

Communist Party of the Soviet Union " Hymn of the Bolshevik Party" , headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow , general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first) Mikhail Gorbachev (last) , founded = , banned = , founder = Vladimir Lenin , newspape ...

(CPSU) leaders (and their families) and major Soviet government facilities (including nuclear-weapons stocks). The directorate consisted of 40,000 uniformed troops. It operated the

Moscow VIP subway Metro-2 () is the informal name for a purported secret underground metro system which parallels the public Moscow Metro (known as Metro-1 when in comparison with Metro-2). The system was supposedly built, or at least started, during the time o ...

system, and the secure government telephone system linking high-level government and CPSU officers. In mid-1992 the KGB's Ninth Directorate became the Main Guard Directorate (''Glavnoye upravleniye okhraneniya'', GUO) and in 1996 it was re-organized to the

Federal Protective Service of Russia The Federal Protective Service, or the Federal Guard Service (russian: Федеральная служба охраны, ФСО, Federalnaya sluzhba okhrany, FSO) of the Russian Federation, official name in English Federal Guard Service of the Ru ...

References

{{Reflist KGB Protective security units