Putin Faces Wrath of Submarine Relatives

Aug. 22, 2000 -- Beleaguered Russian President Vladimir Putin held a tense and emotional meeting today with wives and relatives of the 118 sailors who died in the submarine Kursk as Russia prepared for a day of mourning.

Putin traveled to the northern Russian naval base where the Kursk began its last mission for an unprecedented encounter with relatives, where they grilled him and vented their anger.

“When will we get them back, dead or alive? Answer as the president,” shouted one woman in the crowd, referring to the bodies of the sailors, shown on state-owned RTR television.

“I will answer as I know it myself,” said Putin, the rest of whose remarks were lost due to the bad quality of the tape.

Independent television NTV showed a somber-looking Putin sitting and talking with Irina Lyachin, the wife of Kursk commander Gennady Lyachin, who died with the rest of the crew after the nuclear-powered vessel sank on Aug. 12.

A reporter for RTR said the meeting had lasted three hours and described it as a “difficult discussion.” Putin had promised to talk for as long as people wanted him to, he added.

Putin met between 500 and 600 relatives and local residents. Interfax news agency quoted a source who was at the meeting as saying the Kremlin leader had expressed anger at the poor state of the navy’s rescue equipment.

“It is impossible to believe it is all over,” Interfax quoted Putin as saying. “The grief is immeasurable, no words can console. My heart is aching but yours much more so.”

‘Czar Putin’

The media also lashed out at Putin.

The English-language Moscow Times denounced “Czar Putin” for his perceived reluctance to accept international help.

“Did official reluctance to accept international help kill anybody?” the paper asked, noting that tapping was heard inside the sub as late as Wednesday, and that a British rescue sub could have been on the scene as early as Tuesday if help was requested immediately after the disaster.

On ABCNEWS’ Good Morning America, Admiral Einar Skorgen, head of the Norwegian rescue operation, criticized the Russian bureaucracy for delays.

“That has irritated me a little bit, that we have to accept to wait,” the Norwegian admiral said.

Criticism also came from Putin’s political opponents.

“Something is really fishy about this whole story. In my opinion, such a submarine couldn’t just sink in no time. I think they have a good reason to keep something hidden from the public,” said Sergey Ivanenkov, deputy leader of the opposition Yabloko Party.

“My view is that Putin doesn’t like people. Doesn’t feel the tragedy of the people. Doesn’t feel the soul of the people,” Boris Nemtsov, an opposition leader in the Russian parliament, told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Heroes on the Kursk

Russia’s ITAR-Tass news agency quoted an analyst for Jane’sFighting Ships, a respected publication on military equipment, as saying the crew acted heroically by shutting down the ship’s nuclear reactor — knowing that doing so could have shortened their lives.

The sailors would have had a chance to stay alive if the reactor had not been shut down, said Richard Sharpe, an editor at Jane’s who captained a British nuclear sub in the 1970s. However, the crewmen who survived the initial explosion on the submarine apparently sought to avoid any potential nuclear catastrophe.

While the submariners are being praised as heroes, Russia’s leaders are being lambasted by the media for their handling of the crisis.

“The reputation of the Russian leadership is lying on the bottom of the Barents Sea,” read a headline in the Vremya MN newspaper.

Finger of Blame

With the search for survivors on the sunken Russian sub called off, attention is now turning to how the tragedy happened — and if it could have been avoided.

But with conflicting reports on conditions inside the Kursk — and the cause of the accident still unknown — it may be some time before the disaster is fully understood.

“What if they had not lied to us?” asked the daily Izvestia. “What if they had not waited five days to invite the foreigners? What if we had our own equipment? Now it is too late.”

The submarine sank 354 feet in the Barents Sea after at least two explosions. Norwegian divers entered the ship on Monday and found it flooded.

Seeking Help With Recovery

Russia has asked for Norwegian help in bringing the sailors’ bodies to the surface. Norway said it was considering the request, but any operation to recover the corpses from the submarine could take weeks.

RTR, reporting from a cruiser at the site of the disaster, said a body had been found in one of the final sections of the submarine and that rescuers were trying to release it with the help of a remote-controlled robot arm.

Norway has offered to send a camera into the crippled vessel to film the wreck for details that might help future efforts to bring up the bodies or salvage the vessel.

A salvage operation will also have to address the threat of radiation from the Kursk’s nuclear reactors (see related story).

Russian officials have said the most likely cause of the accident was an initial explosion, either from inside the vessel or caused by a collision, which wrecked the front of the sub and sent it to the seabed at high speed. The impact led to a detonation of the Kursk’s torpedoes, a much bigger blast.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.