LEBED REVEALS MORE ABOUT "MISSING" NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

Retired Lt. Gen. Aleksandr Lebed explained yesterday that he had learned of the Russian military’s Atomic Demolition Munitions (ADMs) in September and October of last year while he was serving as Secretary of the Russian Security Council. Lebed recently charged that some of these small nuclear weapons were unaccounted for. (See yesterday’s Monitor) The ADMs belonged to Special Operations (Spetsnaz) brigades subordinate to the General Staff’s Chief Intelligence Directorate (GRU). Lebed said that former Spetsnaz personnel who had served in these brigades told him that each nuclear warhead was enclosed in a case that measured just 60 x 40 x 20 centimeters. After establishing that these weapons existed, Lebed said, he was unable to determine how many there were before he was removed from office. (Russian agencies, September 8)

Western experts believe that there were at least 16 and possibly as many as 24 Spetsnaz brigades in the Soviet armed forces. They were attached to the several Groups of Forces located in East Germany and the former Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe, and were also in what were once the border military districts of the USSR — now the independent states in the Baltics, the Transcaucasus, and Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus. The Russian army today is thought to have eight of these brigades.

Russian Government Working on Debt to Defense Sector.