Russia mourns Kursk submariner and his mother

Russia mourns Kursk submariner and his mother
REUTERS

KURSK, (Russia) Nov 3: Red, white and blue Russian flags fluttered over the town of Kursk on Friday, a black band on each mourning the deaths of a submariner and his mother.

The body of Viktor Kuznetsov was one of the first raised from the wreck of the Kursk

submarine last week, brought to the surface more than two months after he and 117 shipmates perished in Russia's worst submarine accident.

Hours before news arrived that Kuznetsov's remains had been retrieved from the Arctic, his mother, Olga Kuznetsov, collapsed and died hundreds of miles (kilometres) away in the southern Russian town that gave its name to the nuclear attack submarine.

"She was waiting to the very end," Kuznetsov's sister Albina said.

"She never lost hope that they would find our brother and bury him in the Christian way, that we would return him to the earth. But she died about at 9.15 and about two hours later we got a call that they had identified our Vitya (Viktor)."

At the site of the wreck in the Barents Sea, Russian newsagencies reported, Norwegian and Russian divers shifted their recovery operation to the forward section of the vessel, cutting a hole in the outer hull of its fourth compartment.

According to the sub's logbook, at most 10 crew members should have been in there when disaster struck.

In Kursk, famous as the site of the world's biggest tankbattle and a turning point in the Soviet struggle for survival against Nazi invaders in World War II, servicemen lined a pathway up to the Kuznetsovs' apartment block.

Friends and relatives were guided to two coffins lying side by side on white wooden benches.

Kuznetsov's wife Valentina laid red roses next to hermother-in-law's remains and cried over the military cap and blood-red shroud covering the coffin of her 27-year-old husband.

An Orthodox priest blessed the remains before the military bore the coffins away.

Olga's body was taken to the town's southern cemetery, while Kuznetsov was to be buried close to the centre of Kursk, near a memorial to the town's dead of the Great Patriotic War.

A non-commissioned officer, Kuznetsov was one of the first four sailors to be raised from the Kursk's mangled hull, lying on the seabed more than 108 metres (354 feet) down.

One of the four, Dmitry Kolesnikov, was buried on Saturday. His last scribbled note shattered the official story that all on board died within minutes of two explosions on August 12.

His letter, a copy of which sat at the foot of his coffin, said 23 men had survived for at least a few hours in the rearmost section of the 154-metre (505-foot) long sub.

"It is dark but I will try to write by touch. It seems there is no chance, 10 to 20 per cent. Let's hope someone reads this," the note read.

The Russian business daily Kommersant quoted Kolesnikov's mother on Wednesday as saying neither she nor his widow had received the note from the navy. In Komsomolskaya Pravda, Nothern Fleet commander Vyacheslav Popov denied he had either the original or a copy of the final letter.

The note reopened debate over what really happened to the Kursk.

Vladimir Kuroyedov, the head of Russia's navy, has suggested that the Kursk collided with a NATO submarine. Britain and the United States have denied this, saying an accident with an experimental torpedo probably caused the two blasts.