Anatoly Kvashnin was 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.

Analysts praised the move, which came amid a broader military overhaul sparked in part by a daring and deadly rebel attack in the southern republic of Ingushetia that officials were helpless to prevent.

Kvashnin and two other dismissed generals were all linked to the five-year military operation in Chechnya, where violence is flaring on the eve of controversial elections.

Viewed as a military hawk, Kvashnin headed the chiefs of staff since 1997 and regularly fought with the defense ministry -- run since March 2001 by Putin's close ally Sergei Ivanov, Russia's first civilian defense minister who was put in charge of reforms.

"Kvashnin did not tolerate rivals," the state-run RIA Novsti news agency said in a commentary.

Analysts said that Kvashnin had overpowered Ivanov in military structures, with army generals sneering at a civilian bent on cutting staff and with no military background except for service in the KGB.

But last month, Kvashnin's office was made subordinate to the defense ministry, which faces the imposing headquarters of the general chiefs of staff across a road very near the Kremlin.

The Kremlin decision ended a power struggle born with the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.

Ivanov was in visibly good spirits Monday, saying that the chiefs of staff "should worry about future wars and be less concerned with day-to-day affairs," ITAR-TASS reported.

Kvashnin said he would retire from the military after being sacked, although Putin still awarded him with an order for his service, although one of low rank.

Putin has also pushed ahead with reforms within the Federal Security Service, the former KGB that he himself once headed, by cutting down on the number of top officials to streamline the way Russia's military and security services run.

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 oversaw the interior ministry's North Caucasus region.

Under pressure from Putin, parliament recently approved measures that make the head of the chief of staff subordinate to the defense ministry and force him to report directly to it.

"Putin has changed Russia's military structure and did not think that 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.

Kvashnin's departure marks a break with the military command established by former president Boris Yeltsin that has been embroiled by infighting and loss of morale, at times lacking the finances to engage in international peacekeeping missions.

His replacement Baluyevsky headed Russian forces stationed in former Soviet republics of the North Caucasus in the mid-1990s and became Kvashnin's first deputy in 2001, the same year Putin appointed Ivanov to head the defense ministry.

He also served in East Germany -- where Putin was once stationed as a spy -- in the late 1970s and worked in Putin's native city of Saint Petersburg before moving to Moscow.

"He is one of the few Russian generals who can really implement a new strategy for the military," Golts said.

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