High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Guards (Russian: гвардия) or Guards units (Russian: гвардейские части, gvardeyskiye chasti) were and are elite military units in Imperial Russia, Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. The tradition goes back to the retinue of a knyaz (his druzhina) of medieval Kievan Rus` and the streltsy, the Muscovite harquebusiers formed by Ivan the Terrible by 1550. The exact meaning of the term "Guards" varied over the time.