A year ago Russia had almost 900 main battle tanks in the Kaliningrad region, and it was still in the process of removing them, four-star General of the Army Nikolai Makarov informed a group of foreign military attaches in Moscow on Dec. 10, according to a report from RIA Novosti.

"We had 880 tanks in the Kaliningrad region, and we are pulling virtually all of them out," Makarov said.

However, Makarov made clear that many of the tanks are still in the Kaliningrad region and that the proclaimed withdrawal was being staggered over a relatively long time period.

RIA Novosti said this was because the big and heavy main battle tanks had to be carried out of Kaliningrad by sea, as Lithuania -- which was occupied by the Soviet Union and forcibly made a Soviet republic for approximately 50 years -- refused to allow the tanks to be transported on rail cars through its territory.

RIA Novosti recorded Makarov as saying the tank force reduction confirmed that Russia was not a threat to neighboring nations. Lithuania and Poland have both expressed concern about potential threats to their sovereignty after the Russian army occupied one-third of the former Soviet republic of Georgia in the Caucasus in a five-day blitzkrieg operation from Aug. 8-12.

"However, we have always opposed NATO's eastward expansion, because it poses serious threats to Russia," Makarov stated.

Makarov repeated the consistent Kremlin line of the past few years that Russia would take whatever measures its leaders felt necessary if the United States did not abandon the Bush administration's plan to deploy Ground-based Mid-course Interceptors -- GBIs -- in Poland to defend the United States and Western Europe from the possible future threat of Iranian nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The report noted that the day after President-elect Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 4, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a nationally televised state of the union address warned that he would retaliate by setting up highly accurate short-range Iskander-M mobile, solid-fuel tactical missiles in the Kaliningrad region to target the GBI base in Poland and its associated planned radar tracking base in the Czech Republic.

But since then, Medvedev has struck a more conciliatory note, telling the French newspaper Le Figaro that he might "reconsider this response if the new U.S. administration is ready to once again review and analyze all the consequences of its decisions to deploy the missiles and radar facilities," the RIA Novosti report noted.

Makarov reflected the new, more optimistic Russian diplomatic tone toward Obama when he said there was a chance Russia and the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization might break their long deadlock on updating the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty.

A year ago Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (who was then president) unilaterally declared a moratorium on the CFE Treaty in response to the Bush administration's drive to build the two BMD bases and to try to bring two more former Soviet republics -- Ukraine and Georgia -- into NATO.

RIA Novosti said the Russian government regards the original CFE treaty, which was approved in December 1990 by 16 NATO nations and six nations of the now-defunct Soviet-led Warsaw Pact military alliance, as obsolete, since it did not take into account major developments since then, including the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the expansion since then of NATO to include all former Warsaw Pact member states plus the three former Soviet republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

A revised version of the treaty in November 1999 so far has been approved only by Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, the report noted.

NATO combat aircraft shadowed two Russian supersonic nuclear bombers over the North Sea Thursday night, in a cat-and-mouse game echoing Cold War times, RIA Novosti reported Friday. RIA Novosti quoted Russian air force spokesman Col. Vladimir Drik as stating the two Tupolev Tu-160 White Swans (NATO designation Blackjack) carried out a 13-hour patrol mission over the international waters of the North Sea Thursday night and were followed by U.S.-built F-16s operated by the Norwegian air force and by Tornado combat aircraft of the British Royal Air Force.

RIA Novosti said the Russian air force also filed prior notice of its readiness patrols. The news agency said the bombers "pose no threat to other countries."

However, each Tu-160 Blackjack can carry up to 12 Kh-55 (NATO designation Kent-As15) air-launched cruise missiles, each with a 2,000-mile range and a speed of Mach 2.8 (more than 1,700 mph) and each capable of carrying a thermonuclear warhead that could destroy a European city.

The Russian air force recommenced its Cold War practice of regular long-range strategic bomber patrols over the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans in August 2008.

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