August 25 2000

RUSSIA

'SILENCED' KURSK MOTHER VOWS TO STEP UP CAMPAIGN

From Alice Lagnado in Murmansk and Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor

THE mother of a Russian sailor killed on the Kursk submarine, who was silenced by a tranquilliser injection as she berated a minister, last night vowed to step up her push for justice for the victims.

As the Kremlin was thrown on the defensive by the chilling footage broadcast around the world, the authorities in Russia attempted to suppress a fresh burst of public outrage. The pictures of Nadezhda Tylik being knocked out in midsentence by a sedative, which appeared on the front page of The Times yesterday, were kept off the national networks.

Mrs Tylik said last night that she was distraught at the time of the meeting with Ilya Klebanov, the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of investigating the tragedy. Her husband had asked if there was a doctor who could help. Experts in Britain, however, said that the injection administered was similar to a knockout drug used by vets on animals.

Despite her ordeal Mrs Tylik, contacted last night at her home in the closed naval town of Vidyayevo, refused to be muffled and once again accused President Putin and the naval authorities of abandoning the men under their command, including her son Sergei, 24, who left a wife and an 11-month-old daughter.

"When the tragedy is over we are forgotten, all doors shut on us," she said. She is fighting to have the bodies of the crew members retrieved and for the men to be "buried like proper Christians".

Mrs Tylik, who has emerged as something of a modern dissident figure, said: "The old Soviet mentality is still pretty much alive among many members of the Russian political leadership - they consider it safer to keep their mouths shut."

She and her husband Nikolai, a retired naval captain, would like to leave their home near the top secret naval base, where they have lived for 22 years. "There is nothing to keep us here any longer," she said. "Everything around here will always remind me of my deceased son. I would like to leave and never come back."