Nikolai Makarov (general)

Nikolai Yegorovich Makarov (born 7 October 1949) is a Russian retired general of the army who served as Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and First Deputy Minister of Defence from 2008 to 2012.

Makarov was born in the Ryazan Oblast and graduated from the Moscow Higher Combined Arms Command School in 1971. After becoming a Soviet Army officer he commanded motorized rifle units from the platoon to the division level before becoming the chief of staff of the Joint Group of Russian Forces in Tajikistan in 1993. He held other senior posts, including as commander of the 2nd Guards Tank Army and later the Ground and Coastal Forces of the Baltic Fleet, a new formation that he was tasked with organizing on the basis of the former 11th Guards Army. From 1999 to 2002 Makarov was the chief of staff of the Moscow Military District, also briefly serving as its acting commander in 2001, and from 2002 he led the Siberian Military District until 2007.

He was the Director of Armaments of the Armed Forces and Deputy Minister of Defense from 2007 to 2008, when he was appointed the Chief of the General Staff to assist the new Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov with implementing his major reform of the Russian military. As the Chief of the General Staff he oversaw the Russo-Georgian War in 2008 and implemented the military reform, which also became known as the "Serdyukov-Makarov reform." The largest change it brought about was the reorganization of the Russian Ground Forces from a division-based mass mobilization structure to a brigade-based permanent readiness structure. A few days after Serdyukov was replaced by Sergey Shoigu, the new defense minister appointed a replacement for Makarov.