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The Defense Ministry, trying to quell rumors about missing “nuclear suitcases,” denied Thursday ever producing them and said no country could afford to manufacture and maintain such portable devices.
President Boris Yeltsin’s former security adviser, Alexander Lebed, recently alleged that the Russian military had lost track of as many as 100 suitcase-size nuclear bombs, any one of which could kill up to 100,000 people.
“Nuclear suitcases have never been produced and are not now being produced,” said Igor Valynkin, head of the ministry’s department that oversees nuclear security.
He said Russia’s centralized system of tough controls on all military production provided an effective deterrent against their production.
