Sub Tragedy Still Haunts Kin of Crew

It began with disbelief and the conviction that their men could be saved. It turned into raw fury that no one seemed to be doing enough to rescue the surviving crew members trapped in the stricken Russian nuclear submarine Kursk.

Such was the prolonged agony of the families of the 118 crew members, who all perished after an explosion on the submarine last August.

Now, a year later, the sorrow of these bereaved relatives has settled like ice around their hearts, even as a costly and hazardous operation to raise the submarine unfolds in the Barents Sea.

Many, like Natalya Shevchuk, are simply frozen in their grief. Shevchuk, of the closed military town, Vidyayevo, where many of the families lived, cannot stop thinking of her son Alexander’s last moments, nor accept that he’ll never walk back through her door.

“Since that very day, since Aug. 12, 2000, life has come to a standstill for me,” she lamented by telephone Friday. “Thinking that ‘Mama’ could have been his last word just rips my heart to pieces.

“And all mothers are like that, crushed by the tremendous grief that is impossible to put behind you. It will be with me till my last breath.”

Shevchuk and many like her support the operation to raise the Kursk and recover the bodies, but some relatives are opposed.

Other critics of the operation charge that despite the dangers, including two nuclear reactors on board, salvaging the vessel will not furnish answers about what sank it.

In coming days, the 65-foot bow section of the 500-foot submarine--where the explosion occurred--will be sawed off, to be left on the ocean floor. That will certainly make it more difficult for investigators to determine what caused the blast.

It was believed to be unsafe to raise the Kursk with its damaged bow, in case the section tore off during the salvage operation, with unpredictable results.

A government commission investigating the accident has made no finding on the cause. Naval officials still insist that a foreign submarine might have collided with the Kursk, but another theory is that one of the torpedoes aboard exploded.

Divers have drilled 12 of 26 planned holes along the sides of the hull. The Kursk will be suspended from a 5,500-ton barge by cables attached to these holes. Raising the sub is expected to take eight hours. It will mean overcoming 25,000 to 30,000 tons of soil suction pressure, because the hull has settled deep into the seabed.

The section to be hauled up would normally weigh 9,500 tons, according to two of three firms involved in the salvage, Mammoet and Smit International. With thousands of tons of water on board and currents heaving against the hull, the actual tonnage will be many times that. However, the cables have been rigged to compensate for varying water pressure.

Plans call for the Kursk to be towed at about 3 knots to a dry dock in Murmansk--about 85 miles to the south--that is too shallow to accommodate the barge and the suspended sub. In a delicate maneuver, both will have to be raised by pontoons to facilitate docking.

Russia will pay the salvage firms $65 million, but Igor Spassky, head of Rubin, the firm that designed the Kursk, said last month that the total cost of the operation will be $130 million.

Bad weather hampered last year’s rescue attempts and could delay or complicate the salvage.

When the submarine sank, the Russian navy went into reflexive secrecy mode. Naval authorities shrugged off foreign offers of help for days, then struggled vainly to open the hatch, all amid a storm of criticism.

Once British and Norwegian divers began work, it took them only hours to open the hatch--on Aug. 21, nine days after the blast.

The tragedy was President Vladimir V. Putin’s biggest political crisis, and he returned belatedly from vacation, underestimating the national outpouring of grief.

“He was basking in the sun while our boys were suffocating,” said Olga Safonova, whose brother, Maxim, died. The rage that she and many others feel has not subsided.

“The family members will bear a grudge against the navy for how the rescue operation was organized for the rest of their lives. We will never be able to forget how appalling the rescue operation was,” she said by phone Friday. “People will always remember that it was probably possible to save at least one person, but no one did anything. It will never be forgotten.”

Military secrecy will remain a top priority during the salvage operation, according to Igor Dygalo, press spokesman for the Northern Fleet.

“The secrecy regime will be observed in full. This is a military operation, not a civilian one, and security will be a primary concern,” he said.

But such comments only deepen the conviction of many families that the navy knows what went wrong but is not telling.

“I think that the authorities and the navy command know the truth perfectly well. They are just not telling this truth,” Safonova said.

Tatyana Malyuk’s daughter, Natalya, lost her husband, Sergei Yerakhtin, on the Kursk. The mother doubts that the truth will ever come out.

“The navy commanders know what happened,” she said. “If they are keeping it secret, there must be something that they are afraid of.”

Many are convinced that the navy could have saved some lives. Twenty-three men survived the initial blast and fled to the submarine’s stern. Last October, divers recovered 12 of their bodies along with a note left by one victim, Dmitry Kolesnikov, describing the scene.

In the months after the tragedy, crew members’ families were given compensation and new apartments. Many moved away from Vidyayevo. But most planned to return for a memorial service today. A plaque was unveiled Saturday at a Vidyayevo high school where eight of the crew studied.

After the sinking, Putin promised to raise the submarine, recover the bodies and improve conditions in the navy. He continues to insist on the need for reform of the navy and military, but so far little has happened on the ground.

“We thought that he would be able to change things for the better. But nothing is happening, there is no movement. The navy is still short of vessels, the salaries are critically low,” Shevchuk said, adding that she has lost faith in Putin.

The only thing that matters to her is to bury her son’s body.

“That’s the most important thing for us now, the thing that keeps us going. We have lost the most valuable thing in our lives--our children--and there will never be any replacement. Our lives have lost their meaning,” she said.