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Article: Suitcase Nuclear Devices (Suitcase nuclear device)

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Soviet Union and Russia[edit]
Further information: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

The existence and whereabouts of Soviet suitcase nuclear bombs became an increasing subject of debate following the disarray that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Namely, major concerns regarding the new government’s overall security and control of its nuclear stockpile came into question on 30 May 1997 when an American congressional delegation sent to Russia met with General Aleksandr Lebed, former Secretary of the Russian Security Council. During the meeting, Lebed mentioned the possibility that several suitcase portable nuclear bombs had gone missing. More specifically, according to an investigation Lebed led during his time as acting secretary, it was concluded that 84 of these devices were unaccounted for. Lebed would make several press releases and television interviews regarding the matter later in the year.

Among these releases, Lebed in an interview with CBS newsmagazine Sixty Minutes on 7 September 1997 claimed that the Russian military had lost track of more than a hundred out of a total of 250 "suitcase-sized nuclear bombs". Lebed stated that these devices were made to look like suitcases, and that he had learned of their existence only a few years earlier. Russia's Federal Agency on Atomic Energy on 10 September rejected Lebed's claims as baseless.

Despite the Russian government’s rejection of Lebed’s claims however, the resulting public interest from Lebed's television appearances would eventually provoke a congressional hearing held between 1-2 October 1997 intended on discussing "Nuclear Terrorism and Countermeasures." Chief among these talks was the matter of Russian suitcase portable nuclear bombs and the circulating rumors of these weapons proliferating in the wild.

Although absent from the hearing himself, Lebed's interviews were frequently cited as a cause for concern throughout the duration of this hearing, particularly the 84 missing devices and their capacity to kill 100,000 people each. Present in the witness panel to help corroborate Lebed's claims however was the former Russian Security Council environmental advisor Alexei Yablokov who also served as chairman of the Environmental Security Commission and was highly regarded by his peers in the Russian Federation Academy of Scientists at the time. These experiences would prove vital to his testimony to come.

Yablokov himself made a television interview on NTV shortly after Lebed, and also drafted a letter to Novaya Gazeta affirming both the existence of suitcase nukes and the possibility that some may in fact be missing. Yablokov also clarified that these devices existed as far back as the 1970s. In these communications, Yablokov claimed to have met with many of the researchers who had a hand in developing suitcase nukes. Moreover, his main contention regarding Moscow’s denial was that these devices were never listed on any inventory list to begin with due to their highly sensitive nature, particularly as a result of their supposed use by the USSR’s KGB with targets ranging from the United States to various NATO countries in eastern Europe. Thus, the confirmation of these weapons’ existence in addition to the security and inventory of these weapons would ultimately produce misleading results.

During the hearing itself, Yablokov would maintain his position that KGB nuclear weapon caches continue to exist in operation independent of the recently defunct USSR Ministry of Defense, providing further insight as to why the Russian government and witnesses’ claims contradicted so greatly. Moreover, Yablokov further clarified his source of information, which up until this point remained ambiguous, citing communications between scientists working at the Krasnoyarsk-26, Tomsk-7, Chelialinsk-65, and Penza-19 nuclear installations located across Russia. Granted to relevancy of the perceived threat of these suitcase nuclear bombs was reconsidered as Yablokov explained that if these weapons were developed in the 1970s, then the warheads would have needed to be replaced twice at that point, a possibility he could not guarantee.

According to colonel general of RVSN Viktor Yesin, small-scale nuclear bombs have never been operated by the KGB, but only by the Russian Army. All such devices have been stored in a weapons depot inside Russia, and only left it for checks at the plant which produced them. In mid-1998, a special commission of Russia's Security Council has investigated the storage and utilization of such bombs and found out that no bombs were stolen or lost. Yesin has suggested that Lebed might be misled because of some loose dummy small-scale nuclear bomb, which have the equal size and weight to the real device. Dummy bombs are used for training missions in the Russian army and such devices could have indeed been lost during the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

US Congressman Curt Weldon revived the question in 1999, displaying a "notional model" of what a Russian "suitcase nuke" might look like in a hearing on 26 October, and "lambasting the Clinton administration for not aggressively questioning the Russian government about the existence and location of hidden KGB weapons caches in the United States."

Stanislav Lunev, the highest-ranking GRU defector, claimed that such Russian-made devices exist and described them in more detail. The devices, "identified as RA-115s (or RA-115-01s for submersible weapons)" weigh from fifty to sixty pounds. They can last for many years if wired to an electric source. In case there is a loss of power, there is a battery backup. If the battery runs low, the weapon has a transmitter that sends a coded message either by satellite or directly to a GRU post at a Russian embassy or consulate. According to Lunev, the number of "missing" nuclear devices (as found by General Lebed) "is almost identical to the number of strategic targets upon which those bombs would be used."

Lunev suggested that suitcase nukes might be already deployed by the GRU operatives on US soil to assassinate US leaders in the event of war. He alleged that arms caches were hidden by the KGB in many countries. They were booby-trapped with "Lightning" explosive devices. One such cache, identified by Vasili Mitrokhin, exploded when Swiss authorities sprayed it with a high pressure water gun in a wooded area near Bern. Several others caches were removed successfully. Lunev said that he had personally looked for hiding places for weapons caches in the Shenandoah Valley area and that "it is surprisingly easy to smuggle nuclear weapons into the US" either across the Mexican border or using a small transport missile that can slip undetected when launched from a Russian airplane. US Congressman Curt Weldon supported claims by Lunev but noted that Lunev had "exaggerated things" according to the FBI. Searches of the areas identified by Lunev have been conducted, "but law-enforcement officials have never found such weapons caches, with or without portable nuclear weapons."