Last hopes rest on UK rescue sub

MOSCOW - British forces equipped with a rescue submarine are on their way from a Norwegian port in a last-ditch effort to save 118 Russian sailors trapped in a nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea.

All Russian efforts to save the crew of the Kursk, crippled on the seabed in chilly seas since the weekend and with oxygen running low, have failed. Moscow turned to Nato members Britain and Norway on Wednesday but it will be late tomorrow before the rescue submarine reaches the area.

Although reporting earlier offers of help, Russian media loyal to the Kremlin had downplayed them and many ordinary citizens were unaware that the West could have been involved earlier.

When this sinks in, Russians may feel a wave of anger against their own leaders for putting national pride before human lives and delaying accepting outside help until it may have been too late.

"They have been messing about up there in the Arctic since the weekend instead of at least trying to find out whether Western systems would be compatible with ours," said one Muscovite, who gave only his first name, Viktor.

A retired professor rang a radio talkback show and demanded: "What gestures do we need to make, to whom must we appeal to get them [the authorities] to accept help?"

The independent newspaper Segodnya commented: "Admirals for some reason think that even if one Russian sailor is saved from a Russian submarine with outside help, it will certainly end in a political catastrophe."

Distraught relatives of the men on board the stricken submarine were travelling up to the Arctic base of Severomorsk or ringing telephone hotlines for the latest information.

The rest of the nation, still in shock after a deadly terrorist bomb in Moscow only a week ago, was glued to the television, mentally swinging between hope and fear.

At the other end of the country, in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, President Vladimir Putin was receiving regular reports on the rescue mission while continuing his working holiday. He admitted that the situation was critical but assured Russians that everything was being done to try to save the submariners.

The men on the Kursk are a social mixture of the lowliest conscripts and some of the top brass from the Northern Fleet, who were using the vessel as a headquarters for what should have been morale-boosting manoeuvres.

Decades of communism failed to make them equal but rank counted for nothing as the hours passed, their oxygen supplies ran low and they stared death in the face.

Serving on submarines seems to run in Russian families and several of the relatives interviewed on television were veterans of the underwater world whose sons had followed the same career path.

One such man, heading for Severomorsk, said he knew from his own experience that his son stood probably no more than a 10 per cent chance of surviving the ordeal, but he refused to give up hope.

In St Petersburg, an amateur diving club had helped Lyudmila Milyutina to obtain one of the scarce air tickets to fly up to the Arctic to find out about her son, Andrei.

"He looks so small, so thin," she wept, poring over his photograph.

The central city of Kursk, after which the 14,000-tonne submarine is named, was especially anxious as six of its young men are thought to be enduring the nightmare.

For youths obliged to give two years' military service to the Motherland, a posting to the Northern Fleet was regarded as prestigious.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS

Herald Online stories: Russian sub in distress

Russian Centre for Arms Control: OSKAR subs

World Navies Today: Russian subs

Russian Navy official website