Ukraine says hundreds of missiles missing

AP Wire | March 26 2004 | ANNA MELNICHUK/AP

[knighthawk]

KIEV, Ukraine -- Several hundred decommissioned Soviet-built surface-to-air missiles are unaccounted for in Ukraine's military arsenal, the defense minister told a newspaper.

Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk, in an interview published in the newspaper Den, appeared to suggest the missiles may have been dismantled without proper accounting, rather than stolen or sold.

"We are looking for several hundred missiles," Marchuk was quoted as saying in Thursday's edition. "They have already been decommissioned, but we cannot find them".

Marchuk didn't specify the types of missile. Defense Ministry spokesman Kostyantyn Khivrenko told The Associated Press that he was referring to S-75 air defense missiles - also known in the West by the code-name SA-2.

Marchuk said the Defense Ministry hadn't observed the accounting requirements established by law until last summer, an apparent jab at his predecessors.

Hundreds of such missiles from Soviet arsenals in Warsaw Pact member countries had been brought to Ukraine for dismantling but were lost due to "accounting problems," Khivrenko said.

He said the absence of records documenting what happened to the missiles was "strange," and added that an investigation was under way.

The missiles entered service with the Soviet air defense troops in 1957. Able to shoot down targets at altitudes up to 12 1/2 miles, they have been sold to a large number of nations around the world.

It was the same type of missile that brought down a U.S. U-2 spy plane over the Ural Mountains in 1960. Its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, bailed out safely, but was captured, convicted as a spy, and held for almost two years until being traded for a KGB agent.

The S-75s played a prominent role in the Vietnam war, Mideast conflicts, and, most recently, were used in wars in Yugoslavia and Iraq.

Marchuk blamed his predecessors for not observing proper accounting standards while dealing with the missiles and other weapons.

"They say they were destroyed. OK, destroyed," Marchuk said. "Every such missile has gold, silver, platinum metals. Where are the results of their destruction?"

Marchuk said that when he became minister, "no one knew what the armed forces had," and after nine months in the job he still doesn't have precise information.

He said that inventories of military equipment had revealed a gaping hole equivalent to some $189 billion. In comparison, Ukraine's entire budget last year was less than $10 billion.

Ukraine inherited a vast arsenal with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, including dozens of intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic bombers and a wide array of other weapons. It shipped all its nuclear weapons to Russia in the early 1990s.

Marchuk's statement drew renewed attention to numerous reports of military equipment leaking out of Ukraine amid the post-Soviet turmoil.

In 2002, the United States claimed Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma had sanctioned the sale of a sophisticated military radar to Iraq. The allegation, which Kuchma denies, badly strained relations between Washington and Kiev.

[knighthawk]

Ping

[maestro]

Good news,.....follow the Money!

/sarcasm

[ArrogantBustard]

[ArrogantBustard]

[ffusco]

And why is this former Soviet craphole armed anyway- didn't the west defeat them?

[Blood of Tyrants]

When the Soviet Union dissolved, most countries simply kept the weapons that were in them at the time.

[Ashamed Canadian]

The Ukrainians held a large segment of Russia's military all throughout the Soviet regime, and held onto what was on their land when they gained independance.

[Saturnalia]

Keep in mind this is the SA-2 we are talking about, which is not a great threat to modern fighters with ECM.
That and they HUGE missles, so you can't exactly fire them
out of a pickup or a boat.

[Ashamed Canadian]

Oh, and that includes part of the Soviet union's nuclear arsenal. The Ukies have nukes. But they're allies, not enemies.

[Salgak]

In my B-52 days (1984-1989), we still had guys who flew B-52s in Vietnam.

The SA-2 missile was described as a "Flying telephone poll", and even then, supposedly easy to beat.

Apparentely, one night, the North Vietnamese tried a new trick. . . launching them ballistically without guidance, they actually took out 1-2 B-52s that way: one required the crew to bail out almost immediately, and the other supposedly damaged the jet enough to make it turn back to sea, where the crew ejected (this is from memory 15+ years old of a grizzled old Major telling War Stories. . .)

[ffusco]

The fall of ther evil empire was the biggest hoax of all time. Never before has an adversary benn defeated, remained armed to the teeth, and grifts money from the west while we allow them the pretense of being a world power. Patton had the right idea.

[mitchbert]

Actually, Ukraine has, or is in the final stages, of eliminating all of it's nukes. One source I checked (Ukraine Weekly 1998) claimed the warheads had already been removed from the missiles by the end of 1996, but another source says the rockets/missiles themselves aren't scheduled for final disposal/destruction until 2006, or at least that's how long the U.S. funded program has been extended out to. Recall that in the pre-Iraq war build up Powell (I believe) said words to the effect that "We know what disarmament looks like. We saw it in South Afriaca, we saw it in the Ukraine."

Certainly after the breakup of the Soviet Union, they had the largest inventory of former Soviet weapons outside of Russia itself. It does appear though that that's no longer the case.

Link to article referenced above:
Link

You can also google "Ukraine Disarmament" for more info.

Playoffs coming, eh! Go Leafs :-)

[lilylangtree]

Wonder if the "missing" missiles are in the hands of the Chechen rebels?

[Poohbah]

And why is this former Soviet craphole armed anyway- didn't the west defeat them?

They declared independence from the USSR.

The west helped them become a sovereign nation.

And they're armed because they're worried that Russia might try to reconquer them.