Date of event: June 7, 1995 Amount of material: about 2 kilograms of uranium (probably 2-4% enrichment) Shoot-out on Profsoyuznaya Street The Russian Security Service (FSB) reportedly arranged an undercover sting operation in which they were to buy 2 kilograms of uranium from a trader in Moscow in exchange for $600,000. The agents met a trader early on a mid-summer evening by the side of a major road in a residential district of the city. When they saw the goods, sealed in a canister in a duffel bag, they moved in to make the arrest. While the bag containing the evidence was still being sealed, a local police car pulled up to the scene and opened fire with an automatic weapon, spraying bullets at the federal agents. The FSB returned fire and killed one of the policemen in the car, Andrei Sukhorukov. FSB videos of the operation captured the entire sequence of events on tape. The fact that two different branches of the law enforcement agencies were engaged in a shoot-out developed into a small scandal for the Yeltsin Administration and the entire incident was hushed up because it indicated a lack of coordination within the government. However, lost in the flurry of concern over the actions of the governmental bodies, the fact remains that this may have been a serious case of illicit nuclear materials trafficking in Moscow. It was never officially confirmed whether the material offered to the undercover FSB agents was in fact uranium and if so, how enriched it was. ITAR-TASS reported that the sting was the result of a long-term FSB operation designed to target criminal groups trading in nuclear material. Even if the nuclear materials involved were counterfeit, this operation shows that there were elements of the Russian security services taking this problem seriously. Maps  ·  Timeline  ·  Interviews  ·  FAQS  ·  Links Readings  ·  Reactions  ·  Tapes and Transcripts Explore FRONTLINE web site copyright 1995-2008 WGBH educational foundation