The head of the General Staff publicly questioned Putin's word

The head of the General Staff Yuri Baluevsky, who intervened in a diplomatic game with a soldier’s directness under an agreement on the elimination of medium and smaller missiles (INFMD), publicly doubted the opinion of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin. After the meeting of the Committee of the Chiefs of Staff of the SIS, the general said: "I would not be in a hurry today with the destruction of this contract. Its destruction can lead to irreversible, in my opinion, consequences." And in general, according to Baluevsky, there is no "hot need to immediately leave this contract." Thus, the head of the General Staff, expressed a point of view, which is polar presidential, writes "Gazeta.gzt.ru" .

Russia plans to declare a moratorium on Dovs from December 12. President of the Russian Federation Putin last week at a meeting in Moscow with US Secretary of State Condolizes Rice and Pentagon's chief Robert Gates hinted to the prospect of Russia's exit from the INFMD if it was not possible to give the contract a global character. "It is necessary to deal with this agreement - the Russian -American - global character. It is necessary to convince other participants in international communication to assume the same obligations as Russia and the United States," he said.

“If we cannot achieve these goals, then I think it will be difficult for us to stay within this agreement, when other states are actively developing these weapons systems, including states that are in the immediate vicinity of our borders,” Putin emphasized. And yesterday, the head of the General Staff, on the contrary, supported this agreement, because in the event of a crash, according to Baluevsky, "a large circle of states that can technically and technologically create this weapon will have it." “And, I do not exclude, equip it with both high -precision means of defeat and other more exotic types of weapons, including mass destruction. We don’t need this,” the general emphasized.

Meanwhile, the head of the Center for Military Forecasting, Anatoly Tsyganok, believes that he could hardly make such statements only on his personal initiative. "I doubt that a person of the level of the chief of the General Staff could comment on something without coordination. This is a team game with the West, not personal. And in general, if the president is wrong, then the head of the General Staff should point him out, because the president’s decisions are true for the army."

Nevertheless, the sources of the "newspaper" on Arbat Square believe that Baluevsky crossed the invisible feature of the permitted one, and associate this with the internal situation in the Ministry of Defense.

"Yuri Baluevsky is a military general respected and popular in the army. After Sergey Ivanov, the generals wanted to see him with the Minister. And Serdyukov will never his own in the Ministry of Defense," the source said. According to him, the annoyance of Baluevsky on Serdyukov was especially manifested last month. On September 18, the minister filed a request for resignation due to the fact that his father -in -law Viktor Zubkov was appointed prime minister. On September 24, the president did not satisfy Serdyukov’s request, but during this time the head of the General Staff managed to manage a lot. In particular, on September 20, when visiting the 76th Pskov Airborne Division, he uttered a sacramental phrase that was well remembered in the military department: that the Ministry of Defense can be headed by a woman. In addition, Baluevsky outlined the circle of responsibilities of the Minister of Defense, who should know the problems of the armed forces, and his main function is "so that the soldier is fed, so that he has a new tank."

The sources of the "newspaper" do not exclude that the head of the General Staff knows about his imminent resignation, so yesterday he boldly pointed out Putin to the shortcomings in his analysis of the INFMD - to the best of his ideas about the interests of Russia. Missiles will not join this agreement, ”Baluevsky said.