Ukraine Border Guards Seize Nuclear Material

Ukrainian police arrested a man carrying radioactive material earlier this week at the Ukraine-Hungary border checkpoint at Tisa, according to reports (see GSN, Feb. 10).

The Ukrainian daily Segodnya cited anonymous sources as saying that some of the material was weapon-grade plutonium and that the smuggler was a former employee of the Soviet Union’s Main Intelligence Directorate, according to a report today by the BBC. Volodymyr Bedrykovsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s Main Directorate for Fighting Organized Crime, did not identify the material, but said that it was being carried in a Soviet-made container and had a Soviet certificate of quality (BBC Monitoring, Feb. 25).

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported today that the smuggler was carrying nearly a pound of uranium and told officials that it was intended for use in Hungary “by a dentist’s office,” according to Ukrainian border guard spokesman Yevheniy Bargman (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 24).

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