The limousines, valued at tens of million pounds, were part of a collection held at a military transport museum in the city of Ryazan, south of Moscow. They were supposedly transferred to state garages in the elite Rublevka suburb of the capital after then defence minister Anatoly Serdyukov closed the museum in 2010. However it is now thought that some of the machines went missing along the way and were sold off to private buyers.