Ukraine military 'has lost missiles'

Several hundred Soviet-built missiles are unaccounted for in Ukraine’s military arsenals, Defence Minister Yevhen Marchuk said today.

“We are looking for several hundred missiles,” Marchuk was quoted as saying in the daily newspaper Den.

“They have already been decommissioned, but we cannot find them”.

Marchuk stopped short of saying that the missiles had been sold and appeared to hint that they had been dismantled without proper accounting.

He did not say what types of missiles are unaccounted for.

Ukraine inherited a vast arsenal in the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, including dozens of intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic bombers and a wide array of other weapons.

Marchuk blamed his predecessors for not observing proper accounting standards while dismantling 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?”