Editorial: Have 118 died for Russian pride?

The world watched with a mixture of horror and disbelief as the Russian Navy failed to rescue the crew of its striken submarine this week. Horror, because the submariners' plight could easily be imagined. But disbelief was equally strong that in an age that people are routinely recovered from orbiting space stations, one of the world's great navies could not extract men from a submarine quite close to its coast and just 150m below the surface.

The Russian Navy made four more attempts to establish a connection with the listing submarine yesterday, without success. Strong as the currents may be in the Barents Sea, and difficult as the surface weather is in the Arctic Circle, it is staggering that men should be heard tapping SOS on the hull and there was no quick way of raising the craft or getting them out.

At 100m to 150m down, the crew were within range of a free ascent in protective suits and breathing gear. Russian submariners have reportedly escaped from a submarine once before at a depth of 270m. The technique required a chamber that could be flooded and slow ascents on a line to the surface. Only 14 of a crew of 56 made it. Even then some suffered damaged lungs and other decompression injuries. Undoubtedly, the crew of the Kursk would have taken that chance.

Disbelief turns to disgust when it begins to appear that pride prevented the Russian naval command from calling on Western help as soon as it discovered its limitations. The Cold War was called off by the collapse of the Soviet Union 10 years ago. If Russian and Western navies continue to shadow each other's movements, they do so out of regard for each other's scale and power. They would readily lend assistance to each other's ships in trouble, as evident in the Western offers to help to rescue the crew trapped in the Kursk this week.

By then it was probably too late. Questions are being asked on the streets of Moscow now about why their Navy and their Government waited so long to accept outside help, and had been so quick to consign the 118 sailors to a likely death.

Those questions go all the way to the top. President Vladimir Putin has invested a great deal of personal political capital in the modernisation of Russian sea forces. After the troubles of the Army in Afghanistan and Chechnya the Navy has become the country's proudest force and the six-year-old Kursk, its second-newest submarine, was flagship of the Northern Fleet. Now it presents him with the first crisis in his dealings with the Russian people.

Mr Putin visited the fleet on his first excursion out of Moscow after becoming President in March. He donned an admiral's uniform for the visit, signifying to Russians his personal stake in its fortunes. Now they are asking why he remanied so long in the Black Sea resort of Sochi after the disaster off the northern coast, and why it took him three days to make public comment on it.

And it was four days before his Government accepted an offer of help from a British undersea rescue vessel, apparently at the request of President Clinton. The British ship will arrive today, a full week after the mishap and doubtless too late to find the crew alive.

The next task, one in which Moscow must be less shy of foreign assistance, is to see that a submarine containing radioactive fuel is not left lying on the bottom of the Barents Sea. Russia owes it to neighbours such as Norway, already concerned at radioactive leakage, to see that the reactor fuel is safely contained.

There have been untold accidents in Russian submarines before this - 121 according to Greenpeace. This one at least cannot be buried from the world's concern. There will be intense interest inside and outside Russia about how this tragedy happened, why so little was done until too late, and how to ensure that if something like this happens again, lives can be saved.