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Norwegian Team Pronounces Kursk Crew Dead
Norwegian divers said on Monday they believed all of the 118 crew of Russia's stricken submarine Kursk were dead after entering the main part of the vessel and finding it flooded.
The Norwegian announcement was the final crushing blow to relatives of the men who, despite official Russian pronouncements that most of the crew had probably died following an accident nine days ago, had held out slim hopes taht some may have survived.
The Norwegians provided the final proof as their divers opened the inner hatch of the submarine, lying 108 metres (354 feet) down in the Arctic waters of the Barents Sea, and looked inside.
"The inner section is full of water. The commander of the operation believes there is no one alive aboard," a spokesman for the Norwegian armed forces said in Oslo after divers inspected the sunken nuclear submarine.
The spokesman quoted Rear Admiral Einar Skorgen, head of the Norwegian side of the military operation, as saying he believed the search for survivors should be ended "unless political authorities decide otherwise".
Hopes for the men had steadily faded after the nuclear-powered submarine plunged to the bottom of the sea on August 12 after an accident, as yet unexplained. Officials have said it was caused by a collision or explosions, or both.
Russian officials had said hours before the international rescue team arrived on the scene at the weekend that they believed no one on board had survived.
The Norwegians' near-final verdict was likely to lead to widespread recriminations against Russian authorities for their reluctance to accept outside help.
It took four days for the Russians to accept aid, and only 48 hours for the Norwegians to enter the submarine.
The anger could possibly spread to President Vladimir Putin himself, lambasted by the media for inaction in the early days of the crisis.
The rescue work was being carried out amid complaints by the Norwegians that the operation was being held up by Russian bureaucracy.
An opinion poll released on Monday showed that more than two-thirds of Muscovites denounced Russia's initial refusal to accept foreign help in trying to save the 118 sailors.
The Norwegians entered the inner hatch after prising open the door to the outer door of the vessel. Despite reports that a body lay between the outer and inner hatches, they found none.
If the rescuers go further into the vessel, what they are most likely to see there can only be compared to a horror film or an ultimate nightmare.
Norway has offered to send a camera into the crippled submarine to film the wreck for details that might help future Russian efforts to raise the bodies or salvage the vessel.
A British mini-sub, a state-of-the-art rescue vessel yet to be used in a real operation, is standing by on its mother ship but it seemed unlikely that it would be used.
The Norwegian and Russian teams had disagreed on Sunday over how difficult it would be to get into the sub after the divers had worked on the hatch virtually all day.
After openly contradicting the Russians on Sunday, the commander of the diving team made more criticism on Monday.
"It's going a little slowly. There is some bureaucracy in this," Rear Admiral Einar Skorgen, heading the 12-strong team of Norwegian and British divers, told Norwegian NRK radio.
"There are a lot of people taking part in the decision-making process and some of them might not have the professional qualifications to understand the consequences of the decisions they think should be made," Skorgen added.
Russian officials have said the most likely version for the accident was that the first blast, a smaller one, either came from inside the vessel or was caused by a collision with some object. There were no radiation leaks, they insisted.
They said the first blast wrecked the front of the sub and sent it to the sea bed at high speed. The impact led to a detonation of the Kursk's torpedoes - a much bigger blast.
Many Russians have been moved by the disaster, but their wrath seems to focus on the slow acceptance of outside help.
The Romir public opinion research agency conducted an express telephone poll among 500 people in Moscow at the weekend.
Only 17 percent backed Russia's decision in the first few days not to accept foreign help, while 71 percent said it was wrong, with varying degrees of condemnation.
However, 60 percent of those polled said their attitude to Putin had not changed.
Putin broke a three-day silence when he pledged on Sunday that the rescue effort would go on to "the last moment" in the hope of saving someone. Putin, speaking to church leaders, delivered his most emotional remarks yet on the disaster.
"With sorrow in our hearts and, I do not exaggerate, tears in our eyes, we are following all that is happening in the Barents Sea," he said. "The sailors are doing everything they can to save their comrades.
But media attacks on Putin and his top brass, both at home and abroad, went on unabated.
"In such an extraordinary situation, top officials should bear responsibility, first of all the president, defence minister and navy commander," said tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets. "No one of them has moved a finger."
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