Russian prosecutors said today they had detained a group of officers who were stealing parts of surface-to-air missile systems to sell onto an international arms smuggling ring, according to Reuters. Vast amounts of arms from Russia's arsenals of mostly Cold War-era weapons poured out of the country after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union but the weapons smuggling was thought to have slowed in recent years. The Prosecutor General's main investigations unit said it was investigating officers from a section of the Russian Air Force and Air Defence Forces in northern Russia. "A host of citizens, including former and current officers serving in the Sixth Air Force and Air Defence army, regularly stole equipment including parts of air defence missile complexes in 2008 and 2009," the investigations unit said. "Investigators believe that part of the stolen property ... after going through a chain of purchasers was taken out of the Russian Federation," it said. Russia's customs service said on Thursday that military intelligence had detained more than 10 members of an international smuggling group who were trying to sell arms to Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Bulgaria. It said it had stopped more than 20 tonnes of equipment from going abroad, including parts of S-75, S-125, S-200 and S-300 missile systems and a host of classified materials. The truck-mounted S-300PMU1, known in the West as the SA-20, can shoot down cruise missiles and aircrafts. It can fire at targets up to 150 km (90 miles) away and can travel at more than 2 km per second, according to Russian media. Israel has urged Russia not to sell the S-300 systems to Iran and Belarus has denied reports it plans to sell the missiles to Tehran.
