RUSSIA REJECTS CHARGES THAT NUKES ARE MISSING

This can't be good for anybody:

Russia's Foreign Ministry is rejecting U.S. allegations that some Russian nuclear weapons are unaccounted for.

The ministry says in a Friday statement that allegations made by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates are no more than "insinuations." It insists that no nuclear weapons have disappeared from Russian arsenals.

The ministry says all nuclear weapons in Russia have been under reliable protection since the 1991 Soviet collapse despite the nation's economic turmoil.

Gates spoke earlier this week at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

He expressed worries about what he called the "tens of thousands of old nuclear mines, nuclear artillery shells and so on," left over from the old Soviet arsenal.