Submerged pride News Archive News

The computer generated image of the Kursk, Russia's prestigious nuclear submarine, lying crippled at the bottom of the Barents Sea, evokes...

August 19, 2000 12:00 AM IST

3 min read

The computer generated image of the Kursk, Russia8217;s prestigious nuclear submarine, lying crippled at the bottom of the Barents Sea, evokes both poignancy and anger. Poignancy at the plight of 118 helpless men on board that vessel, whose initial SOS signals have now faded away. Anger at the thought that timely international action could well have prevented this senseless tragedy. Consider these facts: The accident involving the Kursk, caused either by a collision or an explosion, occurred on Saturday, the very day that President Vladimir Putin departed for his Black Sea holiday resort. The president, from all evidence, knew about this development although the Russian public, including close relatives of the submariners, were informed about it only on Monday. Even as desperate measures mounted by the Russian navy to rescue its entrapped men proved futile, it took Putin two more days to concede that the situation was 8220;critical8221; and accept British and Norwegian help. It was only much later that the Russianprime minister, Mikhail Kasynov, summoned up the courage to term the situation as 8220;close to catastrophic8221;.

As of now it will only be around lunch time on Saturday 8212; a full week after the tragedy occurred 8212; that the British mini-sub, LR5, hopes to make contact with the besieged submarine. The high levels of secrecy that were maintained initially, which brought back memories of the notorious 8220;Iron Curtain8221; of yore, were obviously dictated by notions of national interest 8212; highly misplaced notions of national interest, as it turns out. Today, the Russian political and bureaucratic elites stand exposed not just for the shabby manner in which they run the country8217;s defence institutions, but for their callous disregard for the lives of citizens. As the head of the Committee of Mothers of Russian Soldiers in Chechnya, put it, 8220;The Kursk drama shows once again that human life has no value in the eyes of our military, and even less so in the eyes of our politicians.8221; She and many of her fellow citizens believe that the crew was deliberately sacrificed on the altar of misplaced pride and arrogance.

For Putin, with his ambitions of steering Russia to international pre-eminence in a post-Cold War world, this could not have come at a more inopportune moment. Indeed, the Kursk, which was designed to hit aircraft carriers with cruise missiles and then torpedo them, was to have escorted a Russian flotilla to the Mediterranean later this year, in a show of the country8217;s naval might. The fate that visited this submarine should also come as a cautionary lesson to other nations. The US, if it does suffer from feelings of complacency over the discomfiture of the Russians, would do well to recall the Thresher8217;, its submarine that sank in the North Atlantic in April 1963, taking with it all 129 on board. As for the Indian naval establishment, the tragedy must bring home the dangers lurking in its own waters. Reports have it that 14 of India8217;s 18 submarines in service don8217;t come equipped with rescue facilities and that the Navy8217;s skills in this area are primitive in the extreme.

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