- MOSCOW - The resignations
of four senior members of Russia's armed forces have jeopardized the country's
nuclear security and left President Yeltsin in sole charge of the "nuclear
suitcase," the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported Tuesday. Lieutenant-General
Anatoli Sokolov, commander of the Missile Attack Prevention Division, said
he felt his work for the army to be "senseless." Three of his
deputies also resigned in protest at being brought under the control of
the Strategic Missile Troops. Until now General Sokolov and his colleagues
have been regarded as the President's key advisers on the workings of the
"nuclear suitcase." Their resignations came after military reforms
designed to cut costs and improve efficiency. The newspaper expressed
outrage at the loss of the four senior officers and described with derision
the results of General Sokolov's request for a further investigation into
the merging of the two units. Apparently, the investigation took the form
of reprimands for Russia's foremost electronics experts for wearing shoe
laces that were too long. However, Aleksandr Goltz, military expert for
Itogi magazine, said the resignations were more the result of internal
infighting than a matter of military principle and said nuclear security
had not been put at risk. "These men are no longer as important as
they used to be and it came as quite a shock to them to be stripped of
their status," he said. Russia's nuclear capability remains a threat
both to itself and to the rest of the world. A report last year by Germany's
Peace and Conflict Research Foundation said that serious problems with
early-warning systems in Russia meant that nuclear weapons were often kept
in a permanent state of alert and that they could be launched within minutes
of a real or imagined attack.
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