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• In September 1999, police in Vladivostok arrested six men who tried to sell at least 3.5
kilograms of uranium-238. 117
• In July 2001, officers of the Federal Security Service (FSB) arrested two residents of North
Ossetia and one Azerbaijani citizen for illegal possession of 1.5 kilograms of uranium. One
of the North Ossetians served as a colonel in the Interior Ministry when he bought the
uranium in 2000 in an attempt to sell it to a buyer in Turkey. 118
• In June 2002, police seized two kilograms of uranium from a Russian citizen in the city of
Izhevsk, Russia. 119
There have also been media reports of nuclear warheads stolen or missing in the former Soviet
Union. Some attributed claims of “broken arrows” to officials, including then-secretary of Russia’s
Security Council Alexander Lebed and Ukrainian legislator Pyotr Simonenko. 120 None of the alleged
Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies Nuclear Threat Initiative, available at
http://www.nti.org/db/nistraff/1999/19990460.htm as of July 4, 2002.
117 Georgii Kulakov, “Prodavtsy Urana Prinyali Militsionerov Za Banditov” [Uranium peddlers thought policemen were
bandits], Kommersant Daily, September 2, 1999.
118 “Uranium Traffickers Convicted North Ossetia, Russia,” NIS Nuclear Trafficking Database, Center for
Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies Nuclear Threat Initiative, February 27, 2001,
available at http://www.nti.org/db/nistraff/2001/20010130.htm as of July 4, 2002.
119 “Izhevsk, V Tsentre Goroda Izyato Dva Kilogramma Urana” [Izhevsk: two kilograms of uranium seized downtown],
Kupol-Media, June 13, 2002. Also reported in “Prosecution Investigates the Case of 2 Kilos of Uranium Seized in
Udmurtia,” Nuclear.ru, June 10, 2002.
120 Lebed stirred controversy in both Russia and the United States in May 1997 with his allegations that the Russian
government is currently unable to account for some eighty small atomic demolition munitions (ADM’s) which were
manufactured in the USSR during the Cold War. Scott Parrish, “Are Suitcase Nukes on the Loose? The Story Behind
the Controversy,” Monterey Institute of International Studies, November 1997. Simonenko, who heads the Ukrainian
parliament’s Communist faction, told reporters in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on September 11, 2002 that transfer of only 2,200
out of 2,400 warheads, which Ukraine had on its territory at the time of disintegration of Soviet Union, have been
documented, “The fate of the other 200 warheads is unknown,” Simonenko said. He said that a special parliamentary
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