When pro-Russia protesters stormed a police station in Slavyansk, in eastern Ukraine, they seized several hundred firearms.
They also took control of the biggest weapons cache in eastern Europe, which lies beneath their feet.Since March a group of protesters have been guarding the entrance to the Volodarsky salt mine, which holds an underground collection of at least a
million firearms ranging from first world war heavy machine guns to Soviet-era Kalashnikovs.The protesters say they are there to prevent the new government from using the weapons against them, but officials and analysts worry that pro-Russia militias could seize the guns.
"If such a large amount of weapons fell into hands of separatists, it would be a catastrophe," said Alexei Melnik, a defence analyst at the Razumkov centre in Kiev.
When Melnik visited the cache in 2002 it held about 3.5m firearms, he said.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/24/protesters-ukraine-weapons-cache-mine
