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The Threat
Anecdotes of Nuclear Insecurity
Security of nuclear weapons, materials, and expertise in the former Soviet Union continues to be undermined by a broad range of factors, including widespread theft and corruption, including in the military; inadequate resources for building, maintaining, and operating effective nuclear security and accounting systems; and, in some cases, continuing low pay and morale for nuclear workers, guards, and military forces. The list below provides descriptions of specific incidents highlighting these concerns. It is intended only to be illustrative, not definitive. Only incidents that are reasonably well confirme— through statements by senior government officials, arrests or convictions of named individuals, and the like— are included. (For incidents that relate specifically to theft and trafficking in nuclear or radioactive materials in the former Soviet Union, the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies maintains an extensive public database.) The list covers the period from mid-1998 (just as the financial crisis that led to the devaluation of the ruble was unfolding) to the present. Both salaries and facility finances have improved substantially since 1998, so incidents from that period describing protests over insufficient or delayed salaries no longer reflect current conditions. Nevertheless, problems remain, as the more recent incidents below attest.
2003
- On December 27, 2003, in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta, chief Russian military prosecutor General Alexander Savenkov discussed the continuing problems with crime and corruption in the Russian military. He noted that in 2003, 14,000 criminal cases were opened by military prosecutors, including 1,700 for crimes against federal property, for which 1,100 soldiers had criminal proceedings brought against them.[1] He also noted that some 150,000 military families do not have housing, including 50,000 officers. These comments echoed similar ones by his deputy, General Alexander Ivanov, in November 2003, stating that over 1,200 commissioned officers from the Russian armed forces and other law enforcement agencies had been prosecuted for crimes in 2003, with nearly 1,000, including four generals and an admiral, being convicted.[2] Savenkov did note that the number of serious crimes has dropped greatly in recent years, and fewer crimes had been committed under the influence of alcohol and by groups of conspirators. Fewer thefts of weapons had also been committed in 2003 than in previous years.
- On December 18, 2003, Andrei Malyshev, chairman of Gosatomnadzor, Russia's nuclear regulatory agency, reported that four thefts of radioactive materials took place in Russia during the first ten months of 2003. None of these thefts came from sites run by the Ministry of Atomic Energy, but one involved an intensely powerful "Beta-M" radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) from a Russian military site. [3] In addition, on November 12-13, 2003, during inspections of lighthouses in the Kola Gulf region, specialists from Russia's Northern Fleet discovered that two more Beta-M RTGs had been ripped apart by thieves, exposing their radioactive cores.[4] The Beta-M RTGs contain 35,000-40,000 curies of strontium-90, and would pose an especially deadly radiological threat if dispersed in a dirty bomb; some 700 of this model of RTG are believed to be operational in Russia, most of them to power remote lighthouses, which have no human beings on site and no special security provisions.[5] Six thefts of all types of radiological sources took place in 2000 and six more in 2001, with four thefts in 2002, Malyshev said.[6]
- The military prosecutor for Russia's Northern Fleet— which controls large stocks of both highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel and nuclear weapons— told RTR Television on December 6, 2003, that ongoing theft of electronic equipment and parts from the fleet's naval bases was so rampant that it had done "enormous damage" to the military capability of the fleet's ships. The television program reported that theft at these bases is so widespread that in the Arkhangelsk region newspaper ads and vendors at the bus stops of returning fleet workers offer cash for electronic equipment, and several murders had been committed in the Murmansk region, in gangland warfare to control the lucrative trade in metals from stripped equipment. In June 2001, Alexander Kupchenko, the chief of the Gremikha closed naval garrison, and Captain Alexander Okladnikov were sentenced to four years in prison for stealing and selling over 135 FK-P submarine filters— valuable because of the palladium they contain— for more than $200,000. In a separate incident, an FK-P filter disappeared even after it had been sent to brigade headquarters to be placed under guard while its submarine was not in service. In all, the Russian Audit Chamber says that submarines arrive for decommissioning with half of their electronic equipment and precious metals already stripped off.[7]
- On December 3, 2003, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Baltic Fleet's military prosecutor's office announced the confiscation of an "Igla" portable surface-to-air missile and a small cache of arms in the Kaliningrad-region home of a former conscript sailor. The man told investigators he committed the crime in exchange for 4 grams of heroin promised by a criminal gang, a majority of whose members were ethnically from the Caucasus. These missile systems, according to the Baltic Fleet deputy military prosecutor, are viewed as very serious weapons (fetching up to $40,000 on the black market), and are very tightly controlled. The sailor had stolen the system in April 2001, but the commanders of the ship had concealed the fact that the missile system was missing— a type of cover-up that could also occur in the event of a theft of nuclear materials.[8]
- In November 2003, a Russian court sentenced Alexander Tyulyakov, the Deputy Director for administration of Atomflot, the enterprise that maintains Russia's fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers, to 18 months in a penal colony for the illegal possession of illegal nuclear or radioactive materials and illegal munitions.[9] Tyulakov had been arrested in August 2003 by the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Murmansk Oblast police, with just over a kilogram of material described as natural uranium powder (or "yellowcake"), described in some reports as mixed with radium or thorium, and an illegal handgun.[10] Tyulyakov was attempting to sell the material for $55,000.[11] Russia's icebreakers are fueled with highly enriched uranium (enriched to up to 90% U-235).[12] The fact that the material found in Tyulyakov's possession was not enriched lends some credence to claims by Atomflot officials that the material did not originate with Atomflot (as Atomflot is not known to handle natural uranium, or thorium for that matter). Nevertheless, this is the first documented case of nuclear theft and smuggling involving the senior management of a facility handling tons of weapons-grade such material. The judge told American newspapers that Tyulyakov was given the maximum sentence for possession of nuclear materials, but Russian accounts indicate that the court showed leniency because of the lack of prior conviction and the fact that no one was harmed in the incident.[13] At the same time, a separate proceeding is considering whether Tyulyakov deserves additional punishment for actually stealing the material himself (a separate crime from possession under the Russian criminal code).
- On November 10, 2003, Novye Izvestia reported on the Russian military's ongoing problems of theft of hardware and the precious metals in that hardware. For instance, the Russian Space Force in November uncovered a shortage of hardware worth over 11 million rubles. In 2003, the military prosecutor's office had initiated 10 criminal cases against 147 servicemen, including officers, for thefts of precious metals. Among them were a Commander and a Captain in the Baltic Fleet who collaborated to steal 300,000 rubles worth of communication hardware, and a Russian Army major who stole communications equipment worth over 320,000 rubles. The military prosecutor's office also noted that criminals often circulate price lists for components and chips among soldiers who are scheduled for pending demobilization.[14]
- On October 14, 2003, a municipal court in the closed city of Sarov (formerly Arzamas-16) convicted two residents for their role in a scam to sell mercury passed off as weapons-grade plutonium to a Nizhny Novgorod businessman, who was interested in reselling plutonium to potential clients abroad.[15] The two men—a local police investigator, Sergey Denisenko, and a construction engineer, Valery Blinov—met the Nizhny Novgorod businessman, Boris Markin, and convinced him, in part by having Denisenko use his former military officer's uniform and alterations of identity documents he had retained from his time in the service, that the two had access to nuclear material. Having met in 2002 or early 2003 (press reports differ), Markin agreed to pay the two men $750,000, with a $50,000 down payment, for the several kilograms of plutonium they said they could steal from Sarov. After the two men disappeared after receiving the down payment, Markin actually informed the local branch of the Federal Security Service (FSB, from its Russian title) of the plutonium deal, apparently willing to risk jail time in order to try to get his money back.[16] Upon catching the two men, the FSB discovered the container, which contained mercury rather than plutonium, along with an illegal weapon and stash of ammunition.[17] Denisenko and Blinov were charged with seven and six years in prison, respectively, for fraud and illegal firearms possession. Markin died in an automobile accident (which investigators concluded was unrelated) in July 2003. Although no actual plutonium was stolen, this incident is particularly troubling in that it demonstrates the existence of Russian businessmen with substantial sums of cash and connections to clients abroad, seeking to buy weapons-grade plutonium and knowledgeable enough to begin making contact with residents of closed nuclear cities to do so.[18]
- On September 3, 2003, Russia's chief military prosecutor, General Alexander Savenkov, announced that over the last decade, just under 4,700 firearms of various types had been stolen from the Russian armed forces. In the first half of the year, there had been 90 cases of weaponry stolen in the Russian military. Though General Savenkov said that weaponry theft remained a "pressing problem," he also noted that the number of incidents of this type was down 39 percent since 2002. Highlights from the general's report included one case in which an officer in the Emergency Situations Ministry in the Urals Military District stole 150 kilograms of explosives, and another case in which an officer and two midshipmen from the Pacific Fleet stealing more than 327 kilograms of TNT, along with 2,000 detonators.[19]
- On August 1, 2003, a press officer for the Russian chief military prosecutor's office announced that 10 shoulder-fired surface-to-air "Strela-1" missile systems had been recovered in the St. Petersburg region. The launchers had been stolen two weeks earlier from a naval military depot. The spokesman for the military prosecutor's office was described in the report as saying that it was "lucky" that a checkup of the arsenal had been performed shortly after the theft, allowing the missiles to be recovered "before they got into terrorists' hands."[20]
- Lieutenant General Vladimir Ganeev, head of security for the Emergency Situations Ministry, and six co-conspirators were arrested on June 23, 2003. Ganeev was charged with organizing a criminal group, abuse of office, and illegally trafficking in precious stones. The co-conspirators were charged with offenses including ordering murders, extortion, and falsifying evidence in criminal cases, as part of the plot. Ganeev maintains his innocence.[21]
- In May 2003, police in the former Soviet republic of Georgia arrested Tedo Makeria, a taxicab driver, after discovering capsules in his trunk containing radioactive strontium and cesium, substances that could be used to construct a terrorist "dirty bomb." Police also found a vial containing a chemical substance used in mustard gas. This case is particularly important because investigators suspect that Makeria was acting as a courier for a criminal group engaged in smuggling materials and components for weapons of mass destruction, even though they have been unable to track down the buyer and seller of the confiscated material.[22]
- On April 16, 2003, Ziva Kadyrov, the director of the "Radon" nuclear waste disposal facility in the Chechen capital of Grozny, told reporters that two teenagers had died of radiation poisoning after a group of teenagers from the nearby town of Kirov broke into the facility and stole intensely radioactive materials. The facility, which had been largely unprotected, is now under heavy guard, he said. Kadyrov indicated that 12 radioactive sources in Chechnya are still missing.[23]
- In mid-April, 2003, two Georgian policemen and a refugee from the breakaway region of Abkhazia stole a surface-to-air missile from a Georgian military base. The thieves were arrested near the base, while they were disassembling the missile to retrieve palladium components for sale.[24]
- In testimony to the Russian Duma on March 5, 2003, Minister of Atomic Energy Alexander Rumiantsev warned that $450 million was needed over the next six years to bolster security at Russia's nuclear facilities. Rumiantsev told the Russian legislators that 4-5 times current spending was needed to secure Russian nuclear power plants from sabotage, and that because of budget cuts, the number of Ministry of Interior troops guarding key nuclear facilities had been substantially reduced. "Everything boils down to money," he said. Testifying at the same hearing, Yuri Vishnevsky, chairman of Russia's nuclear regulatory agency, argued that whatever improvements might be needed at Ministry of Atomic Energy (MINATOM) facilities, the 7,000 thousand facilities outside MINATOM's control that have radiological materials (many of them with material suitable for a dirty bomb) have much worse security, with many of them guarded only by "unarmed pensioners or women." [25] The government's program for nuclear and radiological safety and security receives only 10-15% of the funding required to implement it each year, Vishnevsky said. A memorandum from the regulatory agency circulated to the Duma said that "the analysis of inspections carried out last year shows that there are serious flaws in the physical protection" of hazardous nuclear facilities. "The system of accounting, control, storage and transportation of radioactive materials is not fully operational yet. As a result, the unauthorized use of radioactive materials and their theft cannot be ruled out." [26]
- In a news conference on February 20, 2003, Yuri Vishnevsky, head of Russia's nuclear regulatory agency, said that "information from the power agencies indicates that there have been attempted attacks" on Russian nuclear facilities by Chechen terrorists. Vishnevsky did not elaborate. He indicated that security at Russian nuclear facilities had been stepped up since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, but warned that many facilities still lacked dependable systems for accounting for and monitoring nuclear material. Presenting his agency's annual report, he said that the agency had conducted 11,449 safety and security inspections in 2002, which had uncovered 12,294 violations— seven of them serious enough to refer to prosecutors for investigation.[27]
- In January 2003, General Igor Valynkin, commander of the 12th Main Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the branch responsible for guarding Russia's nuclear weapons, told visiting U.S. Department of Defense officials at a reception at Sergeyev Posad, north of Moscow, that "Chechen terrorists plan to seize some crucial military facility or nuclear warhead so as to threaten not just Russia, but the whole world." At the same session, retired Brigadier General Thomas Kuenning, the head of the of the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Cooperative Threat Reduction program, noted that the possibility of war with Iraq had increased the risk of nuclear terrorism within the United States, prompting U.S. nuclear weapons facilities to step up security.[28]
2002
- In mid-December 2002, in an article published by the San Jose Mercury News, reporter Daniel Sneider recounts how a retired major of Russia's 12th Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense helped the reporter walk through a hole in a concrete wall and gain access to the main base at Sergeyev Posad (where in addition to security upgrades, the Cooperative Threat Reduction has funded the establishment of a Security Assessment and Training Center to train Russian personnel on warhead security). The reporter and the former major were able to spend about an hour on the base. The path through the hole is well-worn, having been used by the base's housing residents to reach a freshwater spring. The retired major who helped the reporter, Maxim Shingarkin, now works for Greenpeace and pushes for improved nuclear security. He alleges that after critical reports were prepared on security exercises at a warhead storage site in the late 1990s, his superiors at the 12th Main Directorate ordered them destroyed. "Twenty-five armed people," Shingarkin told the Mercury News, "could have penetrated the facility and gotten a weapon. The storage facilities are under realistic threat to be entered by terrorists."[29]
- On November 14, 2002, Yuri Vishnevsky, head of Russia's nuclear regulatory agency Gosatomnadzor (GAN), said in a press conference that his agency's inspectors had recently carried out an inspection of security arrangements at all of Russia's civilian nuclear facilities, and had reported to Russia's Security Council that 6 billion rubles (some $200 million) would be needed to bring these facilities into compliance with security regulations. The funds are needed "to modernize technical defense equipment, as well as for preparing and arming the security services at nuclear sites." Vishnevsky said that while security at Russia's nuclear facilities had been beefed up after the September 11 attacks in the United States, but there was still much to be done. Vishnevsky acknowledged that there had been theft of nuclear material from Russian nuclear facilities, but said that for the civilian facilities regulated by GAN, the confirmed cases involved only grams of highly enriched uranium (HEU), or kilograms of low-enriched uranium (LEU), citing the fuel fabrication plants at Elektrostal and Novosibirsk as the sites of "most" of the known cases. (GAN does not regulate the naval facilities where confirmed thefts of kilogram quantities of HEU have occurred, and the source of some of the other confirmed seizures of kilogram quantities of HEU has not been confirmed.) Vishnevsky called the press conference to criticize a proposed law on technological regulation being debated in the Duma, which he said called for "the minimal necessary demands for security at the same time that in the whole world and in our country the demands for security in using atomic energy should be the maximum."[30]
- In late October 2002, a force of 41 Chechen terrorists (including 19 women) armed with automatic weapons and explosives seized more than 700 hostages at a Moscow theater, and announced their willingness to kill the hostages, and to die themselves, if their demands were not met— demonstrating the ability to Chechen terrorists to mount large-scale operations within Moscow itself. Russian special forces used a knockout gas Russian authorities describe as being based on the opiate fentanyl in breaking the siege, killing 118 of the hostages.[31] The official Russian government newspaper reported that the terrorists had planned to seize a reactor at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, but decided to seize the less well defended theater.[32] Hundreds of kilograms of weapons-usable highly enriched uranium (HEU) are located at Kurchatov. The paper also reported that Russian military counterintelligence had "foiled four attempts" by terrorists to gain access to Russian nuclear stockpiles— two at nuclear warhead storage sites (see discussion below), and two previously unreported incidents involving nuclear warhead transport trains. During a meeting with the European Union, Russian Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov warned that terrorists were "eager to gain access to weapons of mass destruction," and planned to attack hazardous facilities in Russia.[33]
- In late October 2002, Akhmed Zakayev, an envoy for Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov, has warned of future Chechen attacks on Russian targets, possibly including Russian nuclear power plants. "We cannot guarantee that there will not be another group on Russian territory," Akhmed Zakayev told Reuters. "Terrorist acts are possible. We cannot exclude that the next such group takes over some nuclear facility. The results may be catastrophic, not only for Russian society and for Chechen society but for the whole of Europe."[34]
- In October 2002, the Russian nuclear regulatory agency reported that inspectors from its Siberian branch had uncovered 37 violations of material control and accounting regulations and standards, and 32 physical protection violations in the third quarter of 2002 alone. The Siberian branch covers the massive plutonium and HEU production site at Seversk, the plutonium production plant at Zheleznogorsk, and the fuel fabrication facility at Novosibirsk. These were violations of rules, but not actual thefts or losses of nuclear material.[35]
- Police in the Sverdlovsk region arrested three Chechens in March 2002, who were charged with attempting to sell weapons and explosives. One of the men was found to have a valid pass to the high-security closed city of Lesnoy, site of one of Russia's largest nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facilities. Roman Tarsukhanov could have used his pass to enter the city, and have a wide range of contacts with workers at the weapons plant, but would not have been able to enter the plant itself. A subsequent search of the arrested individuals' apartment revealed more weapons, a remote-control bomb, and a copy of Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov's book, Honor is More Valuable Than Life.[36] In January 2002, Russian troops found what they described as late Chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev's personal archive, which contained a detailed plan to hijack a Russian nuclear submarine.[37] The commander of Russia's troops in Chechnya, Vladimir Moltenskoi, told reporters on February 2, 2002, that the plan provided for seven Slav-looking fighters to seize a submarine from the Russian Navy's Pacific Fleet some time in 1995-96, and blackmail Moscow into withdrawing troops from Chechnya and recognizing the republic as an independent state.[38] Moltenskoi reported that former naval officer Islam Khasukhanov developed the plan back in 1995 and that then-chief of the Chechen General Staff Maskhadov had personally reviewed the plan and made notes on it. Khasukhanov had served on Russian submarines before leaving the Pacific Fleet in the rank of naval commander to become chief of the operational department of the Chechen separatists' general staff.[39]
- In January 2002, four soldiers from the unit that guards the weapons plutonium production facility in Zheleznogorsk died, in two separate incidents. On January 1, a drunk driver lost control of his truck, killing two soldiers immediately and a third who died later. Unit officials tried to cover up the accident, but the Krasnoyarsk military prosecutor's office opened an investigation. On January 20, another of the guards died from a gun shot to the head; the circumstances are under investigation.[40] In December 2001, GAN chairman Yuri Vishnevsky, wrote to Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov about a case in March, 2001, in which pieces of radioactive spent nuclear fuel from Russia's navy were damaged and others missing. The fuel was sent from the Northern Fleet to the Mayak reprocessing plant by train, but when the canisters were opened, as much as half of some of the fuel elements were found to be missing— and some of the remainder were badly enough damaged to pose a serious safety hazard to those unloading the fuel. The Russian navy uses both HEU and LEU fuel, and Vishnevsky did not specify whether it was HEU that was missing. Because the navy is not subject to GAN regulation, GAN inspectors had not been present when the fuel was first loaded into the shipping containers, and the hazardous conditions were not documented in the shipping documents, leaving those transporting and unloading the fuel unaware of them. Vishnevsky warned that this was not the first case of this kind, and that the practice of having the Ministry of Defense regulate the security and safety of its own facilities posed serious risks. The whereabouts of the missing pieces are unknown. According to Vishnevsky, this incident was not the first of its kind. [41]
2001
- In December 2001, seven members of an organized crime group, including an ensign in Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) and two former Ministry of Interior (MVD) police officers, were arrested trying to sell 1.1 kg of LEU for $30,000 in a café in the town of Balashikha outside of Moscow.[42] Although this case involved only LEU, it is interesting because it involved both members of a major Russian organized crime group and former members of the police in nuclear trafficking (charges against the FSB ensign were apparently dropped because he had no knowledge of the uranium). Moreover, the theft was from the Russian enrichment and fabrication plant Elektrostal, which has had a number of other thefts, including thefts of HEU, and continues to process large quantities of HEU.[43] The three organizers of the deal received sentences of one year of probation for possession of nuclear material, while two other participants received 2.5-year sentences to a penal colony for illegal possession of firearms.[44]
- In December 2001, GAN chairman Yuri Vishnevsky, wrote to Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov about a case in March 2001 in which pieces of radioactive spent nuclear fuel from Russia's navy were damaged and others missing. The fuel was sent from the Northern Fleet to the Mayak reprocessing plant by train, but when the canisters were opened, as much as half of some of the fuel elements were found to be missing— and some of the remainder were badly enough damaged to pose a serious safety hazard to those unloading the fuel. The Russian navy uses both HEU and LEU fuel, and Vishnevsky did not specify whether it was HEU that was missing. Because the navy is not subject to GAN regulation, GAN inspectors had not been present when the fuel was first loaded into the shipping containers, and the hazardous conditions were not documented in the shipping documents, leaving those transporting and unloading the fuel unaware of them. Vishnevsky warned that this was not the first case of this kind, and that the practice of having the Ministry of Defense regulate the security and safety of its own facilities posed serious risks. The whereabouts of the missing pieces are unknown. According to Vishnevsky, this incident was not the first of its kind. [45]
- Yevgenii Tarasenko, the officer in charge of a military warehouse in the Nizhny Novgorod region, was arrested for selling dozens of automatic weapons and pistols, thousands of rounds of ammunition, bayonets, field binoculars, night-vision instruments, gun sights, and mobile electric generators, Russian NTV reported on November 23, 2001. The warehouse belonged to one of the artillery units of the Mulino garrison. Roughly 27,000 firearms are known to have been stolen from military units in Russia. Reportedly, 53,900 crimes involving illegal trading in weapons were recorded in Russia in 2001.[46]
- On November 10, 2001, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Minister of Atomic Energy Alexander Rumiantsev on a Saturday to discuss security at Russia's nuclear facilities. Two Russian press accounts of the meeting indicate that Putin ordered that security be beefed up, with expanded guard forces to protect against terrorists.[47] One of these articles reports that the meeting was occasioned by an FSB test of security at one nuclear facility, in which the mock "terrorists" were easily able to break through the security system.[48]
- Speaking at the International Atomic Energy on October 31 2001, Yuri G. Volodin, chief of safeguards for the Russian nuclear regulatory agency, revealed that in the last year, his agency had uncovered dozens of violations of Russia's regulations for securing and accounting for nuclear material— including one loss of nuclear material, an event he described as of the "highest consequence." When asked for details, Volodin indicated that he was not at liberty to describe the loss in more detail.[49] In a later interview with Russian TV, Volodin indicated that the case involved a nuclear facility receiving a shipment of nuclear material that had much less material in it than the documents prepared by the shipper indicated it should— which could have been caused by a theft in transit, a theft and forgery of the documents at the shipping facility, or a paperwork mistake. Volodin indicated that the investigation was continuing. Volodin argued that nuclear material in Russia was more vulnerable to theft during such transports than when it was in storage.[50]
- In an interview on Russian ORT Television on October 25, 2001, General Igor Valynkin, commander of the 12th Main Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the force that guards Russia's nuclear weapons, reported two incidents during 2001 of terrorist groups carrying out reconnaissance at Russian nuclear weapon storage facilities— one eight months before his remarks, and the second three months later. In both cases, Valynkin said the terrorist efforts were "nipped in the bud," and that no one had entered the grounds of the weapon storage facilities. Valynkin did not explain, however, how the terrorists had found the facilities, whose location is considered a state secret. Valynkin indicated that he took the possibility of terrorist attack on a warhead storage facility seriously enough to have added additional guards, with better equipment and training, at all facilities.[51]
- In a rare unanimous vote on October 21, 2001, the Russian Duma called on the Russian Prosecutor's Office to investigate allegations of corruption by the chief of the corruption-fighting department of the national police, the Interior Ministry (MVD), Lieutenant General Aleksandr Orlov. It is alleged that he was involved in business conflicts between debtors and creditors in which the directorate took a 50 percent cut of debts collected on creditors' orders. Orlov has reportedly fled the country.[52] MVD forces play a key role in guarding many of Russia's nuclear facilities.
- In October 2001, the FSB and military counter-intelligence agents arrested two guards who had been stealing cooper wire from military facilities in the closed city of Krasnoyarsk-35 (Podgorniy), where rockets are assembled and disassembled. During the previous year, the thieves had stolen 230 coils of copper wire from potentiometers at the facility. The facility managers installed additional alarm systems in all the buildings of the facility, so they would not be solely dependent on the guards for security.[53]
- In late September 2001, Alexander Orlov, director-general of the "Avangard" nuclear weapons assembly-disassembly facility in the town of Sarov (formerly Arzamas-16, also home to one of Russia's two nuclear weapons design laboratories), reported that employees at the plant were stealing integrated circuits and printed circuit boards from the plant's computers, substantially delaying the plant's efforts to convert to civilian production. Orlov said that he had added guards to protect the equipment from the insider thieves, who had not yet been caught. Previously, other insider thieves had been stealing precious metals from the plant, and had been caught and brought to trial.[54]
- On July 8, 2001, a Russian border guard pointing an automatic weapon stole a car from a man driving near the border between Russia's Kaliningrad district and Poland. When police caught up with the deserter, Maksim Starostin, he opened fire, wounding one policeman. He was shot in the leg as he tried to escape on foot, and arrested. This followed soon after an incident when another soldier fled a Kaliningrad border post and shot five people at a farm. Sources attributed these problems to military recruiters, under pressure to meet conscription targets, allowing conscription of mentally ill people into the military. [55] Border guards play a key role in interdicting nuclear smuggling.
- In June 2001, the garrison court at Severomorsk, one of Russia's largest naval bases, where large quantities of HEU naval fuel are stored, convicted three officers for stealing and selling FK-P air filter cartridges, which each contain about 130-140 grams of palladium. The group included the commander of the garrison, Captain Aleksandr Kupchenko, UFSB senior representative Captain Aleksandr Okladnikov, and seaman Vladimir Nani. Between spring 1999 and March 2000 the group stole 135 canisters worth about 10.8 million rubles (over $370,000 at June 2001 exchange rates). The canisters were sold in Murmansk for $400 each. The thieves received prison sentences of three-and-a-half to four-and-a-half years.[56]
- In early May 2001, a soldier guarding the nuclear weapons laboratory in the closed city of Sarov shot and killed himself while on guard duty. Ten days later, another soldier from the same unit fired a warning shot and then injured himself in a suicide attempt. At around the same time, a drunken contractor attacked one of the guards at this facility, who opened fire and wounded the contractor. The contractor was later arrested.[57]
- At an April 2001 conference, Chief of the Russian State Customs Committee Nikolay Kravchenko reported that more than 500 incidents of illegal transportation of nuclear and radioactive materials across the Russian state border were detected by his agency in 2000.[58]
- In April 2001, two Russian naval officers were arrested in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky for attempting to sell components they had stolen from a nuclear submarine, containing radioactive substances.[59]
- In February 2001, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) reported visiting a nuclear facility where the door to the main area with nuclear material was left wide open, and another where guards did not respond when metal detectors went off, and where visible wires to alarm systems that could be cut easily by intruders. The director of the facility with the open door to the nuclear material area said it was left open so employees did not have to use the combination lock to enter the premises.[60]
2000
- On October 6, 2000, at a conference on nuclear non-proliferation in Moscow, Russian Security Council official Raisa Vdovichenko reported that Taliban envoys had sought to recruit at least one Russian nuclear expert. While the recruiting target did not agree to work for the Taliban, three of his colleagues had left his institute for foreign countries and Russian officials did not know where they had gone.[61]
- On September 22, 2000, Russian security service officials found 240 (non-nuclear) missile warheads in a private company's scrap metal storage area in Russia's Pacific port of Khabarovsk.[62]
- At the end of September 2000, Valentin Ivanov, First Deputy Minister of Atomic Energy, told ORT television that the government still lacked the modern accounting methods necessary to keep track of nuclear materials held in 61 different institutions, public and private, scattered around the country. He had just told a meeting of the Russian Cabinet that more than 2 billion rubles ($70 million) would be required to create an adequate accounting system, but only 70 million rubles ($2.3 million) had been allocated.[63] Ivanov said that between 1991 and 1999 there had been 23 attempts to steal fissionable materials, including 21 attempts between 1991 and 1995 and two attempts between 1995 and 1999. In comparison, there were only two attempts between 1945 and 1991. His report to the Cabinet meeting attributed the dramatic increase in theft attempts to the emergence of private firms and insufficient systems for accounting and control of nuclear materials. At the same meeting, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said that inventory and control over fissile materials is "a very important problem."[64]
- On September 12, 2000, a local branch of the national electricity utility cut off power to a strategic missile base 60 miles northeast of Moscow. The utility claimed that the cutoff, ordered because of continued failure to pay bills totaling approximately $624,000, affected only non-combat units. Power was restored when armed troops seized the switching station. The military and the utility subsequently reached an agreement to settle debts and keep the power on.[65]
- In mid-September 2000, a short circuit in the regional electricity system resulted in power failure at the Mayak nuclear reprocessing center and the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant. The Mayak plant and its reactors were reportedly without outside power supply for 45 minutes. The head of the Mayak plant, Vitaliy Sadovnikov, said that the back-up diesel generators needed to run the cooling systems came on-line only 30 minutes later. According to Sadovnikov, only the "near-military discipline" of the plant's personnel prevented a disaster. Ministry of Atomic Energy officials, however, claimed that all backup power systems had come on-line immediately.[66]
- On September 3, 2000, a private from a local military unit in the closed city of Sarov (formerly Arzamas-16), site of Russia's premier nuclear weapons laboratory, was shot by guards after setting off an alarm when he tried to break into a restricted area. What the private had been attempting to do and why remain unknown.[67]
- In early September 2000, Minister of Atomic Energy Evgeniy Adamov told nuclear workers protesting months of unpaid wages that the government owed the ministry over $170 million and had not provided a single ruble in two months.[68] Some 47,000 unpaid nuclear workers joined in protests at various locations around the country, over what the nuclear workers' trade union said was over $400 million in back wages to workers in the nuclear sector.[69]
- In August 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed the scientific "brain drain" on the low salaries for experts. He said that approximately 30,000 Russian scientists are now working abroad. He also confirmed that the average monthly salary for scientists was lower than the national average.[70]
- In late June 2000, the military court in Severomorsk, one of Russia's largest naval bases, convicted seven men of stealing fuel oil from Northern Fleet ships, including the commander of an anti-submarine ship; a senior lieutenant from the fleet's fuel base; the captain and first mate of the tanker Cheremshan; and Aleksandr Rumiantsev, a civilian electrician who was reportedly involved in a Murmansk criminal organization that deals in fuel. All seven men were amnestied. Five others were convicted in an earlier hearing. The theft of 74 metric tons of diesel fuel from the ship Marshal Vasilyevskiy was discovered in 1997.[71]
- In June 2000, after the Altaienergo electric company threatened to shut off power to local units of the Strategic Rocket Forces, which are equipped with Topol-M missile systems, the troops took over four power plants in Altai Krai. The unit owed about $174,000 to the Altaienergo company.[72]
- In May 2000, a military court sentenced 12 men (2 officers, 3 warrant officers, and 7 sailors) for the theft of batteries from submarine torpedoes. The leadership of the guard forces was involved in the theft: in November 1998, torpedo and missile unit Chief of Staff Captain Vladimir Pospelov discovered the thefts, and decided to join in rather than stopping them, inviting the deputy commander of the torpedo ammunition unit, Captain Oleg Yerostenko, and a warrant officer to join him. The warrant officer involved two