Missing missiles might be in terrorists' hands

Mikhail Grishankov, first deputy chairman of the State Duma (lower house) security committee, does not rule it out that the missiles missing in Ukraine might have landed into terrorists' hands.

"If these weapons have been sold to bandits, they can shoot any moment anywhere in the CIS," Mr. Grishankov said in a RIA Novosti interview.

According to the deputy, at issue are exactly the stolen missiles.

The Ukrainian defense ministry is looking for several hundred phased out missiles, Yevgeny Marchuk, the Ukrainian defense minister, said recently.

In his words, the missiles were mothballed after the USSR's disintegration but there is no information about their elimination. "Some say they were scrapped. Each missile contains gold, silver and platinum. But then, where are the results of their elimination?" Mr. Marchuk added in an interview with the Ukrainian Den newspaper.

"Strange things sometimes happen," said the minister. He put it down to the imperfect mechanism of the army's stock taking.

Military property cannot vanish into thin air, "and in most cases, it is just a theft," Mr. Grishankov said, as commenting on the Ukrainian minister's statements.

"One or two missiles might have been accidentally mothballed but several hundred ... we have to investigate the matter," said the parliamentarian.