MOSCOW, Sept. 9 (UPI) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin Thursday signed decrees dismissing his former top general and sending him to Siberia, Interfax news agency said.
Former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin was dismissed from the army in one decree and he was appointed Putin's personal presidential envoy to the vast Siberian region in the other.
The highly controversial Kvashnin bungled the conquest of the city of Grozny in the first Chechen War in the mid-1990s but rose to command the Russian military under former Preisdent Boris Yeltsin and long enjoyed Putin's confidence as well.
But he fell out of favor by opposing Putin's plans to cut down the size of the bloated Russian army and also failed to improve its efficiency. Putin's patience ran out when Kvashnin proved helpless in the face of a formidable new wave of terror by Chechen separatists that has rocked the Caucasus region and other parts of Russia this summer.
