Russians Battle Murky Seas in Race to Save Sub Crew

Russian navy teams battled poor visibility in the icy waters of the Barents Sea early Wednesday in a race to rescue 116 crew trapped for days with dwindling oxygen supplies in a crippled Russian submarine on the seabed.

After a failed first attempt, a rescue capsule was in place by 2 am Moscow time (2200 GMT Tuesday) but had not yet managed the tricky manoeuvre of linking up to the crippled nuclear submarine, RIA news agency said.

Russian officials hope to evacuate the crew in groups of 15 to 20 in shuttle operations by two small rescue capsules. The operation is being made difficult by strong currents and the poor visibility.

Itar-Tass news agency quoted a navy spokesman as saying visibility near the sub had dropped to 1.5 (five feet) to two metres.

The men, trapped in darkness on the damaged vessel, the Kursk, which sank when they shut off the reactor after an accident at the weekend, were likely to be lying down to save energy as air ran low, a navy spokesman said.

Cooped up inside the vessel, they have tapped out signals heard by rescue teams but these have become fainter.

"The signal is getting weaker. Of course, the oxygen is running low -- people just need to lie or sit down," the spokesman at the base at Severomorsk said on Tuesday.

Russia has 22 ships on the surface involved in the rescue bid and has not yet accepted offers of help from Britain or the United States.

But Russian officials have held talks with NATO staff on the rescue effort and a naval commander said a group of officers would be in Brussels later on Wednesday to see what help NATO could offer.

In Russia, officials sounded increasingly grim.

Navy commander Vladimir Kuroyedov told RTR television: "All we know is that there are still people alive, and they are signalling SOS.

"What remains is our hope, which leaves us fewer and fewer chances every day. Our calculations show that by August 18 they will run out of oxygen," he said.

The Kursk crew, after an unexplained accident, was forced to turn off power and let their 500-ft long craft sink to the sea bed, 108 metres (354 ft) below the surface during a military exercise.

RTR state television showed Kuroyedov pointing out damage on a diagram. On the starboard side, a torpedo hatch was wide open and a command tower was damaged. On the port side, bits of the vessel were scattered on the sea floor.

He was quoted as saying the navigation room and the bow were wrecked. The periscope was up.

Officials have said the damage may have been caused by a collision or an explosion on board, but have been reluctant to give firm theories at this stage.

Bad weather threatened to blow surface ships off course on Tuesday but news reports said winds eased early on Wednesday.

It was not clear whether the rescue craft which the United States and Britain have offered to help with the undersea rescue would provide any advantages over Russia's, or even fit over the Russian escape hatch.

In Moscow, Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Dygalo told Reuters: "Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev has thanked all those who offered their assistance. We did not say `no' to anyone."

Earlier on Tuesday, Kuroyedov had given a bleak assessment of the crew's chances of survival in a report to President Vladimir Putin, currently on vacation in a Black Sea resort, saying the prognosis was "very grim".

"I am not a pessimist, I am a realist," he said.

The rescue effort was being pursued through the night, focusing on using the two capsules. They have three-man crews who guide the craft with video cameras and visually through portholes.

Speaking on Tuesday, a Northern Fleet spokesman at the fleet's base in Severomorsk described some of the difficulties.

The submarine is tilted on the sea bed, with its bow pointing down, and also listing sharply to one side, he told Reuters. As a result "these capsules and devices are sliding off it and cannot join with the vessel," he said.

If they succeed in docking, "rescue teams will probably have to carry out crew members, who are likely to be exhausted, on their shoulders," RIA quoted the Navy press office as saying.

If the crew cannot be evacuated with the rescue capsules, a backup plan is to try to raise the entire submarine by strapping 400 tonne pontoons to both sides and inflating them with pressurised air, Interfax quoted Kuroyedov as saying.

There was no immediate word if such a plan would run the danger of giving the crew the bends, or decompression sickness, if the sub were raised too quickly.

Kuroyedov said in televised comments that rescuers were being driven by fear for the sailors' lives. "Our lack of knowledge about the fate of the crew has marked all our work," he said.



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