Ukraine Confirms Several Missiles Missing

Where did they go? The Ukrainian defense minister says hundreds of SAM missiles are missing from his country's arsenal and he has no clue as to where those pesky things have gotten off to.

"We are looking for several hundred missiles," said Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk, in an interview published in the newspaper Den. "They have already been decommissioned, but we cannot find them."

While Marchuk wouldn't specify just which missiles were missing, a defense ministry spokesman said they're S-75s -- better known in the west as SA-2s.

Hundreds of those missiles were taken from former republics of the disintegrated Soviet Union to the Ukraine for destruction. But no one can say for sure what happened to them because they're -- well, missing.

Where they went, who might have taken them and why they're gone are all unanswered questions at this point. But if money is any indication (and it often is), consider this: The value of the missing missiles and other military equipment that was supposed to have been destroyed at the end of the Cold War stands at about $189 billion. That's in the Ukraine alone. The entire defense budget of the Ukraine amounts to around $10 billion a year.

Marchuk blames those who served as defense minister before him. "They say they were destroyed. Okay, destroyed," he 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.

FMI: www.mil.gov.ua/old/eng