Moscow  - President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday Russia would deploy short-range Iskander missiles in its Baltic Sea enclave of Kaliningrad in answer to US plans to site a missile defence system in Eastern Europe.

Medvedev in his first state-of-the-nation address also expressed hope that Barack Obama presidency would work to improve relations with Russia suffering over a host of security issues and the financial crisis.

His comments on missile defence Wednesday were the first detailed announcement of retaliatory steps Russia has said it would take to protect itself against the perceived threat of the US shield.

Medvedev added that the navy would also be called upon and an electronic-blocking radar would be deployed to impair the US missile elements planned in Poland and the Czech Republic. He did not did not say whether the Iskander installations would be nuclear armed.

The Kremlin leader slammed the United States in the opening remarks of his state-of-the-nation speech for the global financial crisis and for using reckless self-interest in provoking Russia's war in Georgia.

Minutes into the speech, his first since taking office in May, Medvedev blamed US for the financial turmoil and its spread to global markets.

"The global financial crisis also started as a local unique event on the US markets ... We need to create mechanisms that would block erroneous, egotistical and sometimes even dangerous decisions by some members of the global community," Medvedev said in the nationally televised speech.

He said Russia's recent war with Georgia was a product of US self-interest, detrimental to the stability of the volatile region and the greater security order.

The war was "a consequence of the US administration's selfish policy that cannot stand up to constructive criticism and prefers unilateral conduct," he told the country's top political elite seated in the Kremlin's opulent St George's hall.

Medvedev added that Washington had sought to use the war in Georgia to push forward NATO enlargement, which Russia views along with the missile defence plans as an immediate US-lead threat to its long-term security.

"The conflict in the Caucasus was used as a pretext for sending NATO warships to the Black Sea and then for the forceful foisting on Europe of America's anti-missile systems, which in its turn will entail retaliatory measures by Russia," Medvedev said in his state of the nation speech.

His hawkish criticism of US foreign policy aped his predecessor Vladimir Putin's resurgent and confrontational foreign policy.

Putin has accused the US administration of initiating the conflict in the Caucasus, and said the war will be as important in shaping future Russian foreign policy as 9/11 was to the United States.

Medveded added in the final statements of his speech that Russia was not inherently "anti-American," saying he hoped that Obama's administration would make the "choice for full-fledged relations with Russia." (dpa)