"You have Russia and the United States, and both have to reduce their nuclear capabilities," four-star Army Gen. Yury Baluyevsky, the chief of staff of the Russian armed forces, told reporters in Moscow Monday, RIA Novosti reported.

"What you want is to be able to deliver a first strike while minimizing your potential enemy's ability to do so," Baluyevsky said, according to the report. "To achieve that, you need to encircle the enemy's territory with offensive and missile-defense bases. ... This is normal military logic. The only problem is that this is the logic of a past era -- the Cold War, and standoffs between blocs in Europe."

Relations between Russia and the United States, which have generally been good over the past 20 years, have deteriorated seriously over the past year because of Russian anger over U.S. plans to deploy an anti-ballistic missile interceptor in Poland and a ballistic missile defense radar installation in the Czech Republic. Both countries are former members of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact and are both now members of the U.S.-led NATO alliance. The Russians are also angry over U.S. moves to possibly further extend NATO to include such former Soviet republics as Ukraine and Georgia, and over U.S. and European moves to recognize an independent Kosovo.