Yuri Baluyevsky

General of the Army Yuri Nikolayevich Baluyevsky (Russian: Юрий Николаевич Балуевский; born 9 January 1947) is a retired Russian Ground Forces officer who served as the First Deputy Minister of Defense and Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation from 2004 to 2008. He was also a Deputy Secretary of the Security Council of Russia from 2008 to 2012.

Baluyevsky joined the Soviet Army in 1966 and was a platoon and company commander before becoming a staff officer in 1974. He spent the rest of his career in staff positions, serving as an operations staff officer for the 28th Army, the 6th Army, and the Leningrad Military District. In the early 1980s he was assigned to the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff and spent the next twenty years working there in several roles. Baluyevsky rose through the hierarchy of the Main Operations Directorate before becoming the Chief of the General Staff in 2004.

During the early presidency of Vladimir Putin he was tasked with conducting high level military negotiations that involved the United States, NATO, and China. As the Chief of the General Staff he favored reorganizing the army into brigades and having the majority of troops be contract soldiers instead of conscripts. But in 2008 he opposed the efforts of new Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov to implement major reforms in the Russian military command structure and their disagreements led to Baluyevsky stepping down.