Russia Denies Missile Hit Sub

B E R L I N, Sept. 8 -- Russian officials are hotly denying that a government investigation had concluded that the Kursk nuclear submarine was sunk by a missile fired by a Russian ship.

The Federal Security Service would not comment on the report, published today in Germany’s Berliner Zeitung. But spokesmen for both the Russian navy and the special commission investigating the Kursk disaster adamantly denied it.

“This is nonsense. Cruisers never carry real warheads, only training weapons, during military exercises,” said Oksana Onishchenko, the spokeswoman for the special commission head,Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov.

Naval spokesman Igor Dygalo also denied the possibility, the Interfax news agency reported.

“In the process of exercises such an accident is strictly excluded because surface ships and submarines operate within strictly defined training zones,” Interfax news agency quotedhim as saying.

Dygalo also said that ships and submarines never fire live ammunition during training.

Part of a Military Exercise?

According to the Berliner Zeitung report, Russia’s Federal Security Service concluded that the Kursk was hit by a new anti-submarine rocket fired by a nuclear-powered cruiser, the Peter the Great.

Both vessels were taking part in naval exercises in the Barents Sea that had been going on since Aug. 2. The Kursk sank on Aug. 12, eventually killing all 118 men on board.

The Berliner Zeitung said the Peter the Great had fired a “Granit” rocket armed with a new target-seeking warhead and that the missile traveled 12 miles underwater.

The report cited in the newspaper, put together by a special investigating team under FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev, said shortly after the missile was fired two underwater explosions were registered, both visible from the bridge of the Peter the Great — flagship of the Russian Northern Fleet.

Those on the ship apparently assumed that the second blast was part of the maneuver. The Kursk was later determined to have been within 1,312 feet of the rocket, the reportsaid.