The SVR (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki) is the Russian name for their Foreign Intelligence Service. It was the first element of the KGB to establish its own, separate identity, initially as the Central Intelligence Service (Centralnaya Sluzhbza Razvedkyin or CSR) in October 1991, but in December of the same year it changed to the current monicker of the SVR. It incorporates most of the foreign operations, intelligence-gathering and intelligence analysis activities of the KGB First Chief Directorate. SVR intelligence activity also includes monitoring possible scientific breakthroughs which might radically change the Russian security situation, as well as determining those areas in which the actions of foreign states' special services and organizations might damage Russian interests.

The first head of the SVR was Yevgeni Primakov who was moved from his role as first deputy chairman of the USSR Committee of State Security (KGB) and chief of the KGB's First Directorate to the position by Boris Yeltsin in December 1991. He was recently replaced by his deputy Col. Gen. Vyacheslav Trubnikov .