It drowned

And are those who claim that Putin has been so revenge on their own people for standing on Bolotnaya and Sakharov, for the cleaned Moscow on the day of the inauguration, for anti -war marches after the capture of Crimea? The first public fright and, as a result, the vanity of revenge was the date on August 12, 2000. That Saturday we still did not know that the Kursk atomic missile carrier sank in the Barents Sea.

Only on Sunday, the first rumors about the lost submarine began to seep from Severomorsk. On Monday, the 14th, they took shape in the subtile press release of the General Committee of the Main Committee of the Navy stating that during the exercises of the Northern Fleet, Kursk was not in touch and a search operation is being conducted in the maneuvera area. Everything that was later included in the dissertation, a volume of criminal cases, journalistic manuscripts, books and brochures of experts, witnesses and eyewitnesses. And only the two most important and possibly the most true evidence we will never recognize: Admiral memoirs and Putin's fears.

The memory of these characters was sublimated into a lies knot, showing the world such a vow of silence, which Solovetsky hermitted are not capable of. In this tight knot, cowardice, irresponsibility, incompetence of the authorities, greed of officials and the unscrupulousness of journalists are tied. No wonder now that Russian television channels are waging an undeclared war with Ukraine, Kursk is increasingly recalling. Or rather, everything that happened around his death in one way or another.

If someday the question of what happened to the Russian television of the era of Mamontov, Kiselev and Solovyov, Putin will answer: it drowned, we will not object to this obvious fact. In the end, no one argues that Kursk really drowned

In the first couple of weeks, the information was able to be obtained in the literal sense by syllables, the headquarters of the Northern Fleet was taken by a blank defense, the chief of his press service Vladimir Navrotsky was finished with official reports, from which it was exactly that nothing followed. But at that vegetarian time it was still not customary to report the press from the leadership of the fleet, which were easily refuted ... by the leadership of the fleet. Well, when the bosses realized that most of the reporters ignores such methods, they made an attempt to stop lying at all.

By that time, many of us managed to establish our own communication channels, and therefore the truthfulness of the admirals in complete seriousness was considered secondary. Our news was fresh for at least a few hours. Suddenly, for many, our risky ordeals, often associated with the likelihood of falling into the clutches of the North Sea counterintelligence, could end: the rumor spread through the Murmansk that the VGLTRK Rossiye Code of Information, headed by the chief of the information chief Arkady Mammontov, was unfolding on board the “PETR GREAD” missile cruiser. And although, by Putin’s coming into the power of “Russia”, he finally degenerated into the platform girl, nevertheless, the temptation to believe in the professionalism of Mamontov, behind whose back the school of Kiselevsky NTV was still looming. But already the first report from the side of the rocket carrier set the cross on our expectations to know at least some details of disaster, not filtered by military censorship.

The mammoths standing under the Barents Sun carried a real nonsense of an emergency buoy, an supposedly shot by a security system of an unsigned American submarine. According to Mamontov, it turned out that the American was faced with Kursk and caused the death of the Russian boat. Let this: this version still worries the minds of our "patriots", and other Western "experts" give her a Hollywood gloss. But the question is: what sources were content with the head of the information service of the second Russian television channel when he reported to the world about the white-green buoy floating within sight? We omit that emergency buoys on American submarines have yellow-orange color. We will also omit the fact that later the sailors from Peter the Great told how the rusty buoy was identified by numbers and turned out to be river, sailing on the Belomore tail of the Gulf Stream from the Northern Dvina. Such geographical caramboles in the northern seas happen quite often. However, journalist Mamontov, enthusiastically issuing his own imagination for the truth, each time referred to the crew of Peter. And never in the frame at least the face of the "source" flashed, despite the fact that the reporter had unconditional access to the crew members.

All this is particular, but the profession consists of little things. Now, when Mamontov “analyzes” the television of the reporters of the native channel dedicated to the Donbass, we can say exactly from what moment journalism began to disappear in Russia. However, her convulsions began a little earlier, but finally took shape in a fatal outcome, thanks to Arkady Mamontov from the Kursk Premier League. In fairness, it should be noted that the commander of the cruiser, Rear Admiral Vladimir Kasatonov quickly corrected the embarrassment, and from now on Mamontov transferred only a report on the weather and the excitement of the sea in the area of the operation to save the submariners. But here he managed to confuse reality with an official point of view. Focuses with a storm sea were especially good at him, when a serene calm shone behind him in the frame.

“The calm sea has not raised a single good sailor,” they like to speak in the Navy. In our case, it rested on the reporter. But then he made him the head of the largest federal drainage pit, to enter into which decent people is not recommended. Decent people are not recommended at all that has a connection with the Kremlin and his faithful "big brother." In a sense, this has become a banality, but banality often borders on the truth, if this does not concern art and wine.

Since Putin’s television has nothing to do with art, banality can be forgiven. The current Putin is also banality. But 14 years ago, the sudden disappearance of the head of state at the moment when the whole world press carried the word "kursk" in the headings of the news, this recluse did not seem trivial. We still reflected on the sheets of the Yeltsin era, when the first persons of the country, often bad or comical, but still reacted to the challenges of fate. Many -day recluse has not yet become a practice, and it did not immediately occur to us that the pauses are not hiding the brainstorming of institutions that provide Putin's ratings in silence, but bewilderment and fear. In the meantime, the admirals got off their feet in search of slender versions of the death of Kursk. Clapses with American submarines, unidentified floating objects, mines of the Second World War, unsuccessful maneuvers during "dinging" and a dozen other hypotheses - one exotic more exotive were offered.

The admirals lied, however, fun, because the first week of the surgery of saving the sailors of the 9th compartment seemed to be a booth. By the time Putin appeared from Sochi’s imprisonment, there was no one to save. It was then that the sacramental broadcast was thrown: "She drowned." Since then, I began to believe that this answer is the best of those that he had to give. At least he meets his ideas about the order of things. This answer with an equal degree can be attributed to both Kursk and Beslan, Nord-Ost, Ukraine or even Russia. It is so universal that it is applicable to everything that should be a zone of its responsibility, but in reality does not concern purely intimate practices, encroaching on which we are attained for the rest of our lives to “swallow” the dust. If someday the question of what happened to the Russian television of the era of Mamontov, Kiselev and Solovyov, Putin will answer: it drowned, we will not object to this obvious fact. In the end, no one argues that Kursk really drowned.

Andrey Korolev is a journalist. In 2000 - Radio Liberty correspondent in Murmansk