The members of the Russian military receive their wages months late and work under appalling conditions. For self-preservation on the one hand or unmitigated greed on the other, all ranks of the armed services are engaged in their own entrepreneurial activities. And the growth of organized crime and the criminalization of the Russian military have merged in ways that make combating the flow of stolen arms extremely difficult. The outflow of Russian weapons seems to be increasing. One operation not only prevented the selling of Grad rockets to Abkhazia, but also resulted in the confiscation of 180 rockets with 18 tons of explosives.
Arrests are the exception rather than the rule.
In the summer and fall of 1998, the Russian economic crisis precipitated a further hemorrhaging of Russian military weapons. But whether the process is formalized and legitimized or continues clandestinely, the exodus of arms is likely to continue. Illegal guns are also being shipped into Russia. One of the most bizarre incidents involved several officials of the Russian embassy in Finland. Acting on information received in August 1996, the Moscow Regional Directorate for Combating Organized Crime identified eight former and current embassy employees, including the first secretary, who had bought more than 200 firearms and more than 5,000 rounds of ammunition in Helsinki and smuggled them into Russia using diplomatic immunity to proceed unhindered through customs controls.6 South of the border Russia is not the only simultaneous market for and supplier of weapons.