One of the first tragic scandals that have given the RF citizens their first view of the person, who has climbed up the Kremlin throne with Yeltsin’s help, was the history of the loss and the investigation of the loss of the “Kursk” submarine.
Let us go through the pages of recent history. The nuclear submarine K-141, a project Antaeus, whose construction began in 1990 on the Northern machine-building works in Severodvinsk, was put out to sea on August 10th 2000. 118 crewmembers and the captain G. P. Lyachin were aboard on August 12th 2000 when at 11:28AM supposedly an underwater explosion was registered in the Barents Sea; two minutes later – another one. As it turned out later, the explosions occurred four hours earlier at about 7:30AM. At 5:30PM the Kursk did not respond and was declared wrecking at 11:30PM. On August 13th at 4:46AM hydro acoustics first discovered the submarine lying on the ground. At 7:30PM the submarine was discovered visually.
It was that day, August 12th 2000 that president Putin went to Sochi on vacation and did not interrupt it in relation to the catastrophe of the Kursk submarine, stayed there during the entire period of the rescue operation. Tanned, in a polo shirt he appeared in the news on television without any sign of grief on his face. Only on August 16th the commandment of the Navy received the president’s sanction for accepting foreign aid to save the Kursk crew, since it turned out that Russia’s Navy does not possess the necessary rescue means. But it was too late. On August 21st 2000 the Navy commandment officially declared the death of the Kursk crew. On August 22nd president Putin finally visited the Navy base in Vedyaevo and met the relatives of the dead sailors.
Then the situation developed in the following way: after committing a criminal negligence the president decided to pay off the relatives of the dead sailors with honors. On August 26th the Kursk captain Gennady Lyachin was posthumously granted the title of Russia’s Hero and the 117 crewmembers were posthumously rewarded with the order of courage. The Kursk would have remained under water it wasn’t for the media, still half-free then, who started to spread information that the Kursk sunk after he collided with an American submarine spying after Russian Navy training. The media had reasons to claim so. Back in August 15th (the next day after the whole world learned about the tragedy) the radio station Echo of Moscow has declared, citing an anonymous source in the American administration: “During the incident with the Kursk submarine, two US Navy submarines were staying near it and their acoustics have registered the sound of the explosion Saturday”. In the evening of the same day the Navy’s Commander-in-Chief, the admiral Vladimir Kuroedov has said that there was a possible collision between the Kursk and an American submarine. On August 16th the Defense Minister Igor Sergeev appeared on television and directly said that the Kursk was rammed. So, on September 19th 2000 president Putin gave the order to start the operations for bringing the rest of the crew and the submarine itself to the surface. However, it was not for elucidating the mystery of its loss. He knew the mystery. He needed to hide the truth.
On October 20th 2000 an expedition of Russian and Norwegian divers arrived to the place where the Kursk sunk.
On November 7th the operation was completed; fifteen bodies were brought out of the deformed compartment. On March 24th 2001 the order about salvaging the Kursk was signed and on May 18th a contract to lift the submarine was signed with the Dutch firm Mammoet. On July 6th the expedition goes out into the Barents Sea.
Notice that the first thing that the expedition did was to separate the first compartment, which was the one to be hit, on July 16th. (The fact that it was, was declared by the chairman of the government commission Ilya Klebanov back on November 8th 2000: “After the operations undertaken by the deep-water Mir machines and the exploration of the submarine by the divers, the collision version received a serious video-proof: an interior dent was discovered in the first compartment.”)
On October 7th 2001 the salvage operation begins. The first compartment is cut and left on the seabed. The Dutch were not trusted for lifting it. On October 21st 2001 the Kursk's body without the first compartment was put in the dock of a ship-repair factory in Roslyakovo. On October 23rd investigators stepped up on the deck of the submarine. Ustinov and his comrades were working hard, examining the submarine without its first compartment, where it was hit by an “object”. On February 2002 the investigators finished their work. On March 20th 2002 the identification of the Kursk sailors was finished. On April 26th 2002 the Kursk was scrapped. Without its first compartment.
Only on May 31st 2002 the salvaging of the first compartment of the Kursk submarine was begun. It was a long process and it ended only on June 21st 2002. Apparently they were gathering the tiniest fragments from the seabed. In case the neighboring Norwegians might lift some. And there might be evidence of a collision with the Americans.
And in June 29th 2002 on the concluding meeting of the investigative commission the official reason was finally named – the explosion of a torpedo. And it was a deliberate lie. A huge lie. A monstrous lie!
I remember the pseudo-investigation commission and the daily television appearances of a freezing Ilya Klebanov, almost from the deck of the ship, which was doing the salvage operation. This lie, the longest in the RF history lasted almost a year. At that time I was detained in Lefortovo prison and observed with disgust the national daily operation: Russian citizens were lied to on the president’s order.
Here are additional facts on the Kursk tragedy, so that the RF citizens do not have any doubts. On December 6th 2000 the RIA-Novosti reported: “On August 17th Russian military planes chased a foreign submarine in Barents Sea”. Here is the text: “Russian military planes chased a foreign submarine in Barents Sea in the training area of the Northern Fleet. This was confirmed by the Defense minister Igor Sergeev. A day earlier, the recently retired Norwegian admiral Einar Skorgen reported this fact. He did not exclude the possibility of a collision between the Russian Kursk with an American submarine. The admiral also confirmed that in late August the USA submarine Memphis entered a Norwegian harbor. Commenting the Norwegian admiral, the marshal Sergeev said that a special commission finished its work and should make its conclusions. According to the Russian minister Skorgen’s declaration will be added to the commission documents and submitted to a ‘deep analysis’. Meanwhile the USA continues to refute the possible involvement of an American submarine in the loss of the Kursk submarine in Barents Sea. As RIA-Novosti learned from sources in the Russian military delegation in Brussels, the Pentagon chief William Cohen declared to the defense minister Igor Sergeev that an American submarine could not have been involved in a possible collision with the Kursk.”
The site http://www.br.com was also bringing new information under the title “Loss of the Kursk submarine”: “In Brussels the defense minister Igor Sergeev declared that the priority version of the Kursk loss still remains a collision with a foreign submarine and also confirmed that six military anti-submarine destroyers of the Northern Fleet did climb in the air. Meanwhile the USA defense minister William Cohen continues to affirm that American submarines have nothing to do with the catastrophe. However the Norwegian admiral Einar Skorgen confirmed the facts, explaining that he has sent a couple of his planes to intercept Russian machines. According to information from Norway the American Toledo submarine left the place of the catastrophe after the collision with Kursk. The submarine was damaged in the front, seven sailors died; the screw propeller and the steering gear were partly destroyed. In two days the crew managed to neutralize the effects of the collision and on August 15th it led the submarine into the deep under the cover of two NATO’s Orions. When on August 18th the Memphis submarine called at a Norwegian harbor for repairs, it was only a part of the operation on rescuing the Toledo. Just as the information about all the British submarines returning to their bases, supposedly because of dysfunctions discovered in the reactor of one of them. Some circumstances became known after the dismissal of Skorgen, who differed in opinion with the NATO leadership, more precisely with the USA Navy commandment and allowed himself to point out the Americans’ involvement in the catastrophe.” There is information confirming that the admiral Vyacheslav Popov did give the order to destroy a foreign submarine in the area where the Kursk was lost. It is for this reason that anti-submarine destroyers were called to fly over the Norwegian coast. But then Popov suddenly cancelled his order after talks with the admiral Skorgen and the planes were returned to the base. It is these circumstances that the Deputy Prime Minister Klebanov was supposed to make public on November 21st like some secret. But he did not because something unforeseen happened: the American democracy started to skid; it did not need another scandal on the background of the presidential elections. About at the same time the Northern Fleet held bombing exercises as a late show of determination to sink spy submarines discovered near the Kursk…