On opening the meeting, the President said that the structure of the Armed Forces was to precisely correspond to the threats Russia was facing and would face in the foreseeable future.
That made it vitally important to determine the Armed Forces developmental strategies for a period up to the year 2015, with due account of national needs and opportunities.
Mr Putin said he did not think that military and law enforcement agencies had the best possible structure of expenditures. As he emphasised, any steps to reform the Armed Forces must be economically grounded.