KURSK TRAGEDY:

AT PRESENT IT CAN NO LONGER BE SAID "THAT'S MORE THAN A CRIME - THAT'S A BLUNDER", AS THE SAILORS HAVE BEEN QUITE DELIBERATELY ABANDONED TO DIE ON THE BOTTOM OF THE BARENTS SEA. SERGEYEV AND KUROYEDOV MUST BE IMMEDIATELY DISMISSED AND CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS SHOULD BE INSTITUTED AGAINST THEM JUST AT ONCE.

PRESIDENT PUTIN DESERVES IMPEACHMENT IF NOT JURIDICAL (WHO WILL JUDGE OF THE CASE?), THEN MORAL AND POLITICAL

STATEMENT OF NIKOLAJ KHRAMOV, SECRETARY OF ARA

Moscow, August 21, 2000

Alas! Nowadays one can no longer quote he will-known saying "That's more than a crime - that's a blunder". Unfortunately, everything that the Russian and international community is becoming aware of every moment makes them realize more and more distinctly: those sailors from Kursk who have survived after the disaster of Saturday, August, 12 and who are buried alive have been deliberately abandoned to die gasping in the steel coffin on the bottom of the Barents Sea.

As the command of the Navy reported ,the strokes against the bulkheads of the sub, made by the dying sailors, were heard till Tuesday. And all this time the command rejected help from NATO countries on saving people who had been still alive; as for President Putin, it turned out that he had been informed of the catastrophe as far as Saturday but had stayed sunburning in Sochi. And finally when the Norwegians and the English were mercifully deigned to allow to come to the aid (having just waited till the sailors ceased giving signs of life?) but were not permitted to land in Severomorsk for the reason of "secrecy". And, in conclusion, all the time the rescue works have been beeing made by the Norwegian divers, the latter were put obstacles in their way.

All mentioned as well as tenacious efforts of the commanders of the Navy to thrust on the public a version of some mythical "water-soluble" foreign submarine, sets thinking that the admirals are trying to hide the true reasons of the catastrophe from the public, though the public suspected of them. As for the Kursk sailors, who have become silent for ever, those reasons have been quite evident to them. One can hardly believe that those submariners, who have survived the explosion, were not simply lost due to the stupidity of the idiots, wearing admiral shoulder-straps, for the sake of keeping " a military secret" and saving "great-power prestige", they were deliberately allowed to die, in order that they might not ever tell the truth about what has happened o the Kursk on the 12th of August.

The Defense Minister Sergeyev, the Commander in Chief of the Navy Kuroyedov, as well as their subordinates, must be dismissed and criminal proceedings should be instituted against them. At the minimum - according to Article 125 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (leaving in danger), at most - according to Article 105, part 2 (murder of two or more persons with particular cruelty and knowing full well that they are helpless).

The role of each of these high standing liars and criminals, guilty of the death of the sailors, is to be cleared up. As the deputy Sergei Yushenkov pointed out in his interview to the radio "Echo of Moscow", it ought to be done by the parliamentary commission.

As far as President Putin is concerned the impression of him as an absolutely weak-willed, morally and politically blind and deaf person just accidentally holding the post of the leader of the nation, now should be revised. Unfortunately, more and more facts are indicative of his deliberate actions from the very beginning, on Saturday, 12, when he has preferred to keep the secret of the military exercise, dooming the sailors to death.

President Putin deserves impeachment. Now the word is not popular as it set everybody's teeth on the edge during the campaign unleashed against Yeltsin by communists in Duma. They accused him of "genocide of the Russian people" and almost of digging up a secret tunnel to Bombay. However today the word can rightfully sound as applied to Putin, who as a pure official of Cheka controlled the Kursk sailors' death with cold mind. The American President Nickson left the White House for a less terrible crime.

The impeachment - either juridical and parliamentary or moral, political and national.

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