An Ocean of Questions

Russia’s armed forces were a major consumer of national wealth under communism, but in the post-Soviet era they have plummeted into decrepitude. Personnel go unpaid for months, ships rust in port for lack of operational funds, essential maintenance is neglected, safety measures--never a priority--are unenforced.

Last Saturday, it is all too likely, dereliction led to disaster. One of Russia’s newest nuclear submarines, the 14,000-ton Kursk, sank in more than 350 feet of water in the Barents Sea off northern Norway, apparently after an on-board explosion. Rescue efforts for the 118 men aboard have so far failed.

On Wednesday, Moscow swallowed its pride and asked Britain and Norway for the help that they and others, including the United States, offered from the beginning. Britain has sent a mini-submarine that can act as a kind of underwater lifeboat. If it can position itself above a cargo hatch on the Kursk it might be able to bring to the surface 16 or so crew members at a time. Russia says the Kursk’s crew will run out of oxygen Friday. But Britain’s Defense Ministry says the rescue vessel probably won’t reach the site of the sinking until Saturday. The race against tragedy may already have been lost.

The fate that appears to loom for the Kursk evokes the primal horror of an Edgar Allan Poe story, of living entombment and inevitable death by slow suffocation. There’s no way to know if things might have been different had Russia sought international help sooner. Instead, reverting to a familiar pattern, it delayed announcing the loss of the Kursk for two days. Initially it suggested the sinking was the result of a collision with a foreign vessel and insisted that its navy was capable of doing all that had to be done.

Seafaring is inherently dangerous, but with prudence many dangers can be avoided. How much care Russian naval officials took to prevent this tragedy and why the government did not request help sooner are questions that the families of the Kursk’s crew deserve to have answered.