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Russian leaders blame West for submarine disaster |
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August 23, 2000
MOSCOW (AP) - Trying to divert public anger over bungled efforts to save a nuclear submarine, the Russian military has been trying to pin the blame on the United States and its other old Cold War enemies. Despite Western denials and the lack of any evidence, the Russian high command insists the most likely reason for the loss of the Kursk and its 118-man crew was a collision with a Western submarine that survived and escaped. Their finger-pointing has been aimed at the U.S. and British navies, which reject the accusations. In Soviet times, the military routinely covered up disasters or tried to shift the blame - and the West was always the most convenient culprit. It's a mindset that has barely changed in the upper echelons of the military, where top commanders are now fighting to save their jobs, analysts say. "It's entirely a propaganda effort," said Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent military analyst. "It looks like paranoia, but at the same time it's the top brass' sensible attempt to survive. They want to get out of the line of fire and direct it at their old enemy."
The top brass has a lot to explain. The Russian media has blasted military chiefs for trying to hush up the disaster, then lying about it and wasting precious time that could have been used to try to save the crew. Navy leaders spread false claims that they were in regular contact with the Kursk's crew, that the trapped seamen could survive for weeks and that foreign help was not needed. Public anger increased as Russians watched on their television sets the professionalism of Norwegian divers who joined the rescue effort and compared it to the Russian navy's botched efforts. For days, the government had rebuffed offers of foreign help until President Vladimir Putin relented, stunning his own commanders. "The military still sees the West as the Cold War enemy," said Alexander Pikayev, a military analyst with the Carnegie Endowment. "For them, Putin's decision to finally ask for foreign aid in rescue efforts came like a tectonic blow." Even though Washington and London officially denied that any of their ships were involved and the Norwegians said there was no evidence of a collision, Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev went on television to air the theory and Russian officers claimed fragments of a foreign submarine were found near the Kursk. But the Russian navy had to acknowledge that a lot of debris litters the bottom of the Barents Sea and they have never provided any evidence to back up the collision theory. Claims of green-and-white buoys left by the mystery submarine turned out to be nets of cabbage accidentally dropped into the sea by Russian ships. Nor could they explain how another submarine could have survived a collision that shattered the Kursk, one of the largest submarines in the world. Many analysts believe the Kursk was destroyed after something went wrong in the vessel's torpedo compartment, causing a massive explosion. Russian media reports say the Kursk was carrying a new form of torpedo which navy officers had complained was unstable. Putin said that he wasn't going to dismiss top commanders over the Kursk, but the rising tide of public criticism makes it increasingly likely that he will order shakeups, analysts say. "Putin will only be able to prevent erosion of his own popularity by telling the truth and finding real culprits among the military," Pikayev said. |
