MOSCOW, August 8 (RIA Novosti)-In the five years since 118 men were lost in the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster, the Russian navy has failed to set up an effective rescue service, a leading business daily reported Monday.
Vedomosti wrote that the seven-man crew of the AS-28 deep-sea submersible spent more than three days submerged in the Bering Sea off the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula after it became entangled in fishing nets. It was only rescued on Sunday after the British Royal Navy provided assistance. Twenty-nine RN experts arrived on the scene with the remotely operated Scorpio deep-diving vehicle, which was fitted with a manipulator that cut the fetters holding the AS-28 in place.
According to presidential spokesman Alexei Gromov, Vladimir Putin thanked everyone who was involved in the rescue operation. However, politicians were unhappy: left-wingers were distressed that foreigners had contributed and right-wingers were upset by the pitiful state of the navy.
"It is incomprehensible why the British have the necessary equipment and we don't," Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said. Dmitry Rogozin, the leader of a left-wing patriotic party, Homeland, said his faction would raise the issue with the Main Military Prosecutor's Office because it suspected the navy of negligence and doubted "the true role played by the British rescuers." Only United Russia proved to be quite pleased with the outcome of the drama: The chairman of the party's Central Executive Committee, Andrei Vorobyov, said, "the operation was conducted at a high professional level" and asked politicians to end their speculation.
According to the military, it learnt its lessons form the Kursk disaster. Seven Tiger search-and-rescue submersibles and four diving suits were bought overseas and a shipyard in Rybinsk completed an advanced rescue ship for the navy, a source in the Defense Ministry said. The 2005 budget allocated as much money for developing an advanced diving suit as it did for developing the fifth-generation fighter, i.e. 300 million rubles ($10.5 million), a Federal Agency for Industry official echoed.
However, the rescue service remains "spread" among four fleets and, as far as the Pacific is concerned, between Kamchatka and the Maritime Territory as well. As a result, assets are scarce, naval expert Mikhail Barabanov said. "If rescuing a small submersible craft is so great a problem for the Navy, it is hard to fathom what would happen if a real nuclear submarine found itself in distress," he said.
