Putin Takes Blame for Sub Deaths

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin assumed political responsibility Wednesday night for the deaths of 118 sailors, ruling out “indiscriminate reprisals” against military leaders for the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk and a sluggish weeklong rescue effort.

At the same time, Putin vowed to save Russia’s military from the post-Soviet “disintegration” that he said was promoted by some of his leading critics and had contributed to the Aug. 12 disaster in the Barents Sea.

The president’s remarks in a 25-minute television interview, on a day of national mourning for the seamen, sought to project the image of a take-charge leader so many of his compatriots had found lacking in the wake of the Russian navy’s worst peacetime tragedy.

Kremlin watchers called his statesmanlike tone and “the-buck-stops-here” message an effective if painfully belated response to his first serious presidential crisis. They said it could shore up an approval rating that slumped by 8 percentage points in one survey Wednesday but was still a respectable 65%.

“What we are going through today is very difficult,” he said in a hushed, somber voice. “Events like these should not divide but unite the people. Together we will overcome this and rebuild the army, the navy and the state.”

Putin disclosed that Defense Minister Igor D. Sergeyev, navy chief Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov and Adm. Vyacheslav Popov, commander of the Northern Fleet, had offered their resignations after calling off the rescue attempt Monday. He rejected them.

“Nothing will be done until a full understanding has been gained about what happened and why, whether anyone was guilty, truly guilty, or whether it was simply a tragic confluence of events,” he said. Then “if anybody is to blame, he will have to be punished.”

Smiling for the only time in the interview, he said he ignored advice to fire or arrest some subordinate. “That’s how it was often done,” he said, alluding to a habit of his predecessor, President Boris N. Yeltsin, in times of crisis.

The new president’s behavior during his own first crisis since succeeding Yeltsin on Jan. 1 has revealed several things about the former KGB spy and political newcomer.

Initially popular because of his youth, seriousness and dynamism, Putin seemed aloof and distant after the Kursk sank. He stayed on vacation for nearly a week at the Black Sea resort of Sochi and didn’t request foreign rescuers until Aug. 16. Instead of going to the submarine’s Arctic port to energize rescue efforts, he portrayed himself last week as a functionary who didn’t want to get in the way.

Wednesday’s interview showed his reluctance to challenge a military leadership that offers crucial support.

Instead, he promised to pursue long-delayed restructuring that would make the bloated, underfunded armed forces more “compact, modern and well paid.”

Putin also revealed a readiness to break with a millennium-old tradition in which Russian leaders--from czars to Soviet party chiefs to the freely elected Yeltsin--ruled with little or no sense of accountability to the people.

Under popular pressure, Putin finally went north to the Barents Sea navy base at Vidyayevo late Tuesday. Facing hundreds of residents and relatives of the dead crewmen in a stormy 90-minute meeting, he shared what he called his “immeasurable grief.”

He was forced to call off a memorial service there Wednesday after angry relatives refused to attend such rites until the bodies are retrieved from the submarine. Cutting short a planned two-day visit to the base, he returned to Moscow.

In the TV interview, he said one mourner had confronted him at the closed meeting with a challenge: “We know that you started your job not long ago . . . but you took this cross upon yourself and you must carry it.”

“That person is right,” Putin said, choosing words carefully. “For that reason I bear a feeling of full responsibility and guilt for this tragedy.”

“PR-wise, it was not a bad interview,” said Masha Lipman, deputy editor of the liberal Russian newsweekly Itogi. “His overall bearing and tone was right--very grim, compassionate, serious, not overemotional and emphasizing the need for strength. Russians will appreciate this.”

For all the media outcry at home against Putin’s handling of the crisis, the effect on his popularity may have been overstated.

The All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Research put the president’s popularity rating at 65% on Wednesday and said he was still the nation’s most trusted politician by far. The respected agency polled 1,574 people nationwide from Saturday through Monday, the day the rescue effort ended.

The president’s rating was 8 percentage points down from July’s survey but 4 percentage points up from June’s, according to the agency.

“Public opinion says, ‘Yes, this is a tragedy,’ but people have come to expect tragedy in their lives,” said Alexei Grazhdankin, the agency’s deputy director.

Said Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer: “Putin is not up for reelection any time soon, and the Kremlin firmly controls the country and a large part of the media. Public anger will subside in time, so Putin can weather this storm. But his honeymoon with the nation is over.”

The president’s carefully controlled interview on television skirted many questions about the disaster and his own behavior.

He did not, for example, discuss his reluctance to end his Black Sea vacation, or any of the myriad theories about what brought the navy’s most modern submarine down during naval exercises.

One theory that Russian officials mention almost daily is that a U.S. or British submarine spying on the maneuvers collided with the Kursk. Officials of both Western nations deny it.

Instead of repeating that politically explosive assertion, Putin thanked the British and Norwegian rescue teams he finally summoned last week and whose divers succeeded, where Russians had failed, in entering an escape hatch and confirming stem-to-stern flooding in the 500-foot-long nuclear submarine.

Even if he had asked for the divers earlier, Putin said, it would have been too late.

Putin injected one sour partisan note into the interview by alluding to Vladimir A. Gusinsky and Boris A. Berezovsky, magnates at odds with the Kremlin. They have used their media outlets to ridicule Putin’s handling of the disaster.

He accused them and others of trying to weaken the military.

“Some people are trying to use this disaster to provoke some kind of political crisis,” Putin said.

Citing the tycoons’ effort to raise money for the sailors’ families, he said: “It would be better if they sold their villas on the French and Spanish Riviera, but then they would have to explain where they got the money.”

The government promised Wednesday to pay each dead seaman’s family compensation equal to 145 months of officer’s pay--a total of $850,000, or about $7,000 per family. While generous by Russian standards, the sum highlights the low pay that forces many officers to take second jobs.