The defence ministry said General Valentin Korabelnikov had voluntarily left because of his age. But analysts linked the move to the reforms that have provoked discontent among hardliners in a military struggling to keep pace with the times.

Medvedev signed a decree "to remove Army General Valentin Vladimirovich Korabelnikov from the position of chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) ... and to dismiss him from military service," said a Kremlin statement.

The intelligence service known in Russia by its acronym GRU is the country's largest spy agency and has traditionally controlled thousands of special-forces troops.

In Soviet days it had regular turf battles with the KGB secret police.

Korabelnikov had boasted of successful GRU operations in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Vietnam and Yugoslavia in a rare 2006 interview with the Izvestia daily.

In a separate decree on Friday Medvedev bestowed an award "For Services to the Fatherland" on the dismissed general. He was replaced by his deputy, General Alexander Shlyakhturov.

A defence ministry spokesman, Alexander Drobyshevsky, told Interfax news agency that Korabelnikov had submitted his resignation because at 63 he was beyond the military retirement age of 60.

But the RIA Novosti news agency quoted an anonymous GRU source as saying that Korabelnikov, who had led the GRU since 1997, had left in protest at the reorganisation of his agency.

Analysts and other media reports said he had stepped down because of his opposition to military reforms.

"The general expressed his protest against the continued disbanding of combat-ready and highly qualified GRU (brigades) and their subordination to defence ministry command districts, as well as planned cuts to the GRU structure," the senior GRU source told RIA Novosti.

Russia's leaders are pursuing ambitious reforms aimed at modernising the military and streamlining its top-heavy command structure, as a result of which more than 150,000 officers are expected to lose their jobs.

The dismissal is a victory for supporters of military reform, said Pavel Felgenhauer, a defence commentator for the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.

"This is not simply a resignation. Massive reforms of the GRU are coming," Felgenhauer told AFP. "The goal of these reforms is to break up the GRU into parts."

Under the reform, special forces troops currently under the GRU will be made independent from military intelligence, a structure closer to that of the US armed forces, Felgenhauer said.

Independent defence analyst Alexander Golts told AFP that the dismissal was linked to Kremlin anger at the GRU's performance in last summer's war between Russia and Georgia.

Russia's leaders "reproached the GRU for not having warned them about the Georgian intervention in South Ossetia," Golts said.

During the conflict, Russia poured troops and tanks into Georgia in response to a Georgian military attempt to retake South Ossetia, whose separatist leaders had long enjoyed support from Moscow.

Reformers say the Georgia war exposed weaknesses in the coordination and combat readiness of Russia's military, which inherited much of its structure from Soviet days when it was designed to fight a massive land war against NATO.

But hardliners, including some prominent retired generals, have furiously opposed the reforms and the Russian press has reported discontent among the current top brass.

The Kommersant daily newspaper reported last November that Korabelnikov was part of a group of top generals who had submitted their resignations in protest at the reforms.

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