MOSCOW, July 11 (AVN) - The Defence Ministry board will meet on Wednesday to discuss prospects of the Armed Forces development for the period until 2016, a ministry source told the Military News Agency.
The board session will be chaired by Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev, the source said. The main presentation on the reasons to re-establish the general-purpose forces command will be delivered by Chief-of-Staff Anatoly Kvashnin, he noted.
The chief-of-staff will propose restoration of the command which was abolished by Russia's first president Boris Yeltsin in order to sack its "hard-bitten" chief Army General Vladimir Semyonov, the source stressed. However after the outbreak of the Chechnya war many military district commanders have come to the conclusion that the command's abolition, as well as the unification of the Air Force and Air Defence, were mistakes.
The commanders of all armed services and branches, military district chiefs and heads of central military command bodies have preliminary studied Kvashnin's basic proposals, but their formal consideration seems unlikely, the source claimed. The chief-of-staff is trying to re-establish the command by means of cutting strategic offensive weapons, he said.
On June 24, Kvashnin told the graduates of the General Staff Academy that "Russia should have the minimum sufficient amount of nuclear weapons, not exceeding it." However Sergeyev and Strategic Missile Forces Commander Vladimir Yakovlev strongly oppose this idea.
The Defence Ministry board was to address the issue on June 23, but the session was postponed without disclosing any reasons.