AFP, MOSCOW: The powerful head of Russia's general chiefs of staff, who tried to defend the army against reforms including important staff cutbacks, was sacked as President Vladimir Putin moved to stamp his authority over the cash-strapped military.
Anatoly Kvashnin will be replaced by his first deputy, Ukrainian-born career soldier Yury Baluyevsky, 57, who helped to negotiate an arms reduction treaty with the United States and also set up a joint council between Russia and NATO.
Kvashnin had led the agency since 1997 and regularly fought with the defense ministry, which had been run since March 2001 headed by Putin's close ally Sergei Ivanov, Russia's first civilian defense minister.
Last month, Kvashnin's office was made subordinate to the ministry, which faces the imposing headquarters of the general chiefs of staff across a road a stone's throw from the Kremlin.
Putin has since moved on to reforms within the Federal Security Service (the former KGB) that he himself once headed, cutting down on the number of top officials to streamline the way Russia's military and security services function.
The deputy head of the FSB was among several other senior officials dismissed on Monday in one of the biggest military reshuffles since Putin came to power four years ago.
The others included Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, who headed the interior ministry's troops serving in Chechnya, and Mikhail Labunets, who headed the interior ministry's North Caucasus region.
Under pressure from Putin, parliament recently approved measures that make the chiefs of staff subordinate to the defense ministry and force him to report directly to it.
Media reports said the general chief of staff will now only be in charge of drafting the planning stages of potential military operations.
Reports said Kvashnin's team has repeatedly stalled Ivanov's efforts to cut staff in what was to be a first step towards thinning out the bloated Soviet-era force.
“Putin has changes Russia's military structure and did not think the Kvashnin was ready for his new assignment. Kvashnin had to have a strategic mind, which he lacked,” said military analyst Alexander Golts.
He said that other reshuffles were probably linked to the crushing raids by rebels in the volatile Caucasus that killed some 90 people — most of them local officials and security agents — in the republic of Ingushetia neighboring separatist Chechnya.
