The Russian Ministry of Defense is destroying stockpiles of weapons to create jobs for the Soviet-era gun manufacturers. Marco Vorobiev reports …

The Russian Ministry of Defense intends to utilize (read destroy and melt down) 4 million older model guns by the year 2015. These will be pulled from the stockpiles of estimated 16 million guns that are no longer in service with Russian Armed Forces. Roughly 6.45 million of these guns are no longer serviceable.

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The Ministry of Industry and Trade is planning to send these guns to the factories where they were produced for disposal. Apparently this would keep in business plants like Molot and create 240 jobs. Meanwhile, Russia’s biggest arsenal Izhmash, had to suspend its destruction program after misplacing approximately 80 AKM rifles.

Any number of local companies must want to get their hands on those guns in order to break them down to parts kits and export them to collectors. It is sad they are being melted down to create jobs for one floundering industry, at the expense of jobs at other Russian companies and collectors worldwide.

[ Many thanks to Jeff for emailing us the link. ]