Something happened to Kursk

The Norwegian diving vessel Regalia will arrive at the site of the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster in the Barents Sea by the middle of this week. Experts say that the final preparations for underwater work will be completed during the transition of the Regalia to the point with the now known coordinates of 69.40 N to the whole world. and 37.35 E, so that the Russian-Norwegian team of divers will be able to almost immediately begin diving on the sunken submarine. As stated by the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Sergei Ivanov, “there will be no changes in the operation schedule.” Even despite the fact that, in the words of Mr. Ivanov himself, “now no one can definitely say how many bodies can be raised, and whether it will be possible to lift anyone at all.”

And although members of the government commission stubbornly continue to call the beginning of the first stage of the operation “the evacuation of the bodies of dead submariners to the surface,” it is now clear that the meaning of what is happening is completely different. It is absolutely necessary for the Russian military-political leadership to finally understand what exactly happened in the Barents Sea on that fateful day of August 12th. Because without knowledge of the true causes of the Kursk disaster, Moscow does not dare to begin large-scale reforms of the national security system planned for the near future.

Summing up the results of the next meeting of the government commission, its chairman Ilya Klebanov was forced to admit that “the reasons for the explosion that led to the death of the submarine are not entirely clear.” Translated from bureaucratic language, this means that during the two months of its work, the commission absolutely failed to make any progress in investigating the causes of the Kursk disaster. Particular hopes were placed on the Mir deep-sea submersibles, which in recent weeks have carefully searched the bottom in the area of ​​the accident, bringing to the surface any fragments of the lost submarine. At the same time, a series of unique experiments were carried out at a training ground near St. Petersburg, during which the military hoped to understand what could lead to the detonation of the Kursk ammunition. The result of all this turned out to be paradoxical: nothing has yet been discovered that could lead to such a terrible catastrophe. As Mr. Klebanov stated: “We were unable to reach conditions under which something could happen to the submarine, but something clearly happened to it.” Well, the chairman of the government commission cannot be denied observation.

Meanwhile, the mystery surrounding the Kursk disaster is already forcing the Russian Navy to reconsider its plans. Thus, the launch of the multi-purpose aircraft carrier group of the Navy, which was supposed to display the Russian flag in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, has been postponed “indefinitely.” A number of restrictions have been introduced on combat patrols of Russian nuclear submarines carrying weapons systems of the same type as the Kursk.

Yuri GOLOTYUK