The Moscow Times

Saturday, August 19, 2000, p. 24

MAILBOX

Kursk Incident Elicits Both Anger and Prayers

The nightmare that is unfolding right now on the nuclear submarine Kursk is combined with another nightmare. But the second nightmare is not surrounded by darkness, under 100 meters of icy water. It's unfolding in the light of day, at the very highest levels of the nation's military and political leadership.

On Aug. 12, when the catastrophe began and the Kursk lay on the bottom of the Barents Sea floor, Commander in Chief Vladimir Putin should have immediately cut short his vacation and turned to the United States, Great Britain and Norway for help; he should have approached all countries that could help with the resque operation to wrest the gasping and dying sailors from their steel coffin. Putin, who so loves to pose on the bridge of a submarine, can imagine what those people are feeling who are buried alive on the bottom of the sea. Instead, the commanders of the Navy and the nation's leaders hush up the catastrophe for a whole day and then, over the course of another four days (more than 100 hours!), rejected help from NATO countries on saving the submarine and its crew. One hundred eighteen people - maybe still alive! - are essentially cold heartedly sacrificed to the idols of "military secrecy" and "the prestidge of a great power."

Putin himself - the president and supreme commander - bears personal responsibility for the lives of the Kursk sailors: before their relatives, before God - in whom he says he believes - and before the nation. Instead, he continues to relax in the Sochi's sun. Well you can understand him: he is only got the vacation, and we still have a lot of nuclear submarines. And a lot more sailors that can be drafted.

Have a good vacation, Mr. Putin!

Nikolaj Khramov

secretary

Antimilitarist Radical Association

Moscow

<...>