“Unfortunately, there are ‘exotic’ things when we are looking for several hundred missiles that have been decommissioned, but we cannot find them," he said. “The missiles are said to have been dismantled,” Mr. Marchuk noted, adding that such missiles contained silver, gold, and platinum-group metals. “Where are the results of the dismantling?” he asked.

There was no common accounting system in the Ukrainian armed forces before Mr. Marchuk was appointed Defense Minister in June 2003. An inventory audit carried out after his appointment showed a $180bn difference with the previous report. “In other words, nobody knew exactly what was happening in the armed forces,” he said. “Frankly speaking, I cannot say that this is precise information – although I carried out two inventory audits - because there was no accounting,” Mr. Marchuk stressed.

Meanwhile, non-proliferation of the weapons of mass destruction was discussed at a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the CIS countries in Minsk on Friday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attended the meeting.

This was his first foreign trip as the Foreign Minister. During the visit, he will hold bilateral talks with his Belarusian, Ukrainian and Kyrgyz counterparts. Mr. Lavrov will also take part in the meeting of the foreign ministers of the CIS countries with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.