General of the Army Yury Baluyevsky, Russia's chief of staff, has written an article entitled "U.S. NMD: What Next?" It was published by the Russian national defense weekly Voenno-Promyshlenny Kuryer 10 days after the G8 summit in St. Petersburg. Leaders as senior as the chief of staff, who is also deputy defense minister, seldom write articles for the Russian press. They prefer writing articles and giving interviews to the foreign media before official visits abroad, and seldom reach out to the people via the Russian media. When they do, it is usually for a very serious reason. Baluyevsky, the No. 2 man in the Russian defense establishment, could not keep silent when the Pentagon accelerated the U.S. National Missile Defense project, and his article can be considered a policy statement by the Russian defense establishment.
He writes that Washington has taken a turn towards unilateral global superiority, although "the time when Russia and the Untied States regarded each other as adversaries or a strategic threat is past" and their defense departments have been promoting cooperation in the last few years.