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Wreathes of flowers on the waves |
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August 25, 2000
MOSCOW (AP) - Grieving relatives of the 118 sailors who died in a nuclear submarine headed out into the cold gray Barents Sea on Thursday to lay flowers on the waves above the sunken warship, Russian television said. Before setting off from Vidyayevo in northern Russia, where the submarine Kursk was based, many relatives of the crew clustered to watch the laying of a foundation stone for a memorial to the vessel. Ambulances and medical workers stood at the edge of the crowd to help any relatives who became overwhelmed. The disaster has been a grueling ordeal for the survivors, many of whom found out about the sinking only from television reports, then endured days of waiting before the announcement that their sons and husbands were dead. The flowers they were to lay on the waters include a wreath from President Vladimir Putin, news reports said. Many of the sailors' relatives declined to join in a national day of mourning on Wednesday, demanding that the bodies of their sons and husbands be retrieved from the sea floor first. Their bitter stance underlined widespread criticism of the government's slow and confused response to the Aug. 12 sinking of the Kursk. Much of the criticism has centered on Putin, who remained on vacation during the first days of the crisis and made his first public statement on the Kursk four days after it sank. Moving to allay popular criticism, Putin on Wednesday said he felt "fully responsible and guilty" - an unusually candid statement in a country with a long tradition of authoritarian leaders. Despite widespread dismay over the Kursk crisis, Putin's support does not appear to have been badly undermined, a poll indicated. The poll by the All-Russia Center for Public Opinion Research shows Putin's approval rating at 65 percent. That was down about 1 percent from the previous poll, the newspaper Segodnya on Thursday cited poll director Yuri Levada as saying. Many had expected that Putin would respond to the Kursk disaster by firing top brass. Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev and navy chief Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov submitted their resignations Wednesday over the loss of the Kursk but Putin said he would not accept them. Seeking scapegoats would be "the most mistaken response," he said on Russia's RTR television. Speaking firmly and somberly in the television interview, Putin defended his initial silence and the slow response to foreign offers of rescue help, saying the navy acted as quickly as it could given how little was known about the submarine's condition. He also promised to restore the honor of the beleaguered military and the nation. "It grieves me, the theory lately that together with the Kursk the honor of the navy also drowned, the honor of Russia," Putin said. "Our country has survived a lot." "We will overcome it all and restore it all, the military and the navy and the state," he said. The Kremlin has promised compensation to the families, who had relied on the sailors' meager salaries for subsistence. The federal government promised a one-time payment equal of an average of dlrs 7,000 per family - equal to 10 years of pay for a submarine officer, said Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matviyenko. Concern has been growing about the ship's two nuclear reactors and other weaponry. The Norwegian Nuclear Protection Authority said Wednesday it had found no sign of a radiation leak. The cause of the explosion that mangled the ship was unclear. The Russian high command says the most likely reason was a collision with a foreign submarine, although no concrete evidence has been provided. A likely scenario was an internal malfunction and explosion in the Kursk's torpedo compartment. |
