New Russian Sub Joins Fleet: "Gepard" Claimed to be the World's Fastest and Most Awesome.

Strana.ru ^ | 4/12/2003 | Michael Stedman

The silent service hails a new warrior.


Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) listens to the explanations of Russian Navy Commander-in-Chief Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov 04 December 2001, during the inauguration of the new multi-purpose nuclear submarine Gepard in Severodvinsk. Pool Photo.

Super-silent Gepard, awesome new flagship of Russia's submarine fleet, ceremonially took to northern waters of the White Sea under navy colours today (Tuesday) at a ceremony going some way to easing the wounds of the Kursk disaster and restoring marine service morale. It has been hailed as Russia-s first nuclear-powered submarine of the 21st century.

Head-of-state Vladimir Putin met the crew and sent the missile-armed, torpedo-carrying boat - named Cheetah in English - into service after successful sea and weapons trials under the blue and white Russian fleet flag of St. Andrew. The ceremony, at Severodvinsk in the Arkhangelsk region where the vessel was built, was attended by Russian Navy Fleet Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov and the chief of the Russian General Staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, RIA Novosti news agency said.

Navy officers have already applauded the boost to pride that comes with the new vessel. Commander-in-chief Kuroyedov is on record as calling it symbolic for the lost boat to be replaced by a new submarine, noting that Russia was advancing to building a new fleet which will be a tribute to the sailors who died on Kursk.

The 110-metre-long craft is the last in a fleet of 14 Bars series submarines to be constructed. It displaces up to 12,770 tonnes, dives to a maximum depth of 600 metres and makes a top speed below the waves of 35 knots.

Gepard is served by a 63-strong crew and has an armament potential of 24 nuclear-tipped Granit cruise missiles with a range of up to 3,000 kilometres. It also carries a Strela anti-aircraft weapons system. Though much smaller than the wrecked Kursk, Gepard is viewed as the most formidable ship in the Russian Navy. Construction began in 1991.

Western naval observers say the submarine-s arrival is an important step forward. U.S. experts believe Gepard may move as fast and as quietly as America's best fully-operational boats of the Los Angeles class, and have the capacity to dive deeper and harness more firepower, according to a report on the U.S. ABCNews international website.

The new boat is named to honour a World War 1 Russian submarine. As a comparison, its forerunner moved at 8.5 knots and submerged to a maximum depth of 50 metres. It's arsenal was two cannon, a machine-gun and 12 torpedoes.

An official act transferring and commissioning the new boat was signed at the Sevmashpredpriyatiye industrial plant at Severodvinsk yesterday.

http://kursk.strana.ru/english

Wednesday, 21 May, 2003, 12:34 GMT 13:34 UK

Clean-up on Russian nuclear subs.

BBC


Nuclear waste from Russia's dismantled nuclear submarine fleet is to be cleaned up in an agreement reached among European countries. The submarine fleet has lain rusting in the north-west of Russia - 40km from the Norwegian border - ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It has taken 10 years of talks to reach the 'historic' agreement, which is aimed at removing the environmental threat to the Barents region.

The foreign ministers of Russia, Sweden and France signed the accord at a ceremony in Stockholm. Sweden, along with others in the Barents region, had already pledged some $72m to clean up the nuclear waste, mainly comprising spent nuclear fuel. But disagreements over custom duties on equipment needed for the job held the money back. Clean-up projects should now be able to get under way immediately following Wednesday's agreement.

Future accords.

But the BBC's Lars Bevanger says analysts warn the region needs 10 times the amount of money pledged before it can be declared safe from nuclear environmental damage. The hope now is that donors will pledge more money when they see real results from the environmental projects expected to start soon, our correspondent said. It is thought there are around 100 Russian submarines carrying 300 nuclear reactors and some 8,000 nuclear fuel assemblies rusting in the fjords of Kola Peninsula.

Sweden's Foreign Minister, Anna Lindh, described the signing of the agreement as an "historic event, which makes us able to prevent future environmental disasters". She also said it would help to keep any nuclear waste out of the hands of terrorists. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said the accord opened "a new stage" in joint efforts to resolve the decommissioning of the laid-up nuclear fleet in north-west Russia. Russia planned to sign similar agreements with Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan, Russia's Itar-Tass news agency quoted the minister as saying.


http://www.navy.ru/

K-19: Truth and Lies.

Proua.Com
Valery Golodny
06/09/2003 19:58

The movie was widely advertised as an accurate rendition the K-19 tragedy. The opposite has now been proven.


Eight submariners died as a result of an accident that took place on board the Soviet K-19 submarine on July 4th, 1961. Fifty years after the tragedy, American movie-makers released a movie with the title K-19: The Widowmaker. The movie was shown in theaters in Ukraine in the middle of May of the current year. The Ukrainian premier of the motion picture was advertised nationwide as "the true story of the K-19 submarine." TV host Yury Marakov said that the movie was not a success in the States, because it was too kind to Soviet submariners.

Where did they see this kind attitude? Captain N. Zateyev, who commanded the crew, when a breakdown occurred on board the sub, was portrayed as a dumb careerist who had become the captain of the submarine because he was married to a daughter of a senior Soviet official. The movie portrayed the first commander of the reactor group as a drunkard, and Soviet submariners dropped their pants and showed their backsides to an American serviceman who was photographing them. This gesture is totally American; Russians would instead put a hand on their elbow. If this is what they call kindness, what do they call evil then?

Americans simply tried to humiliate Russians in the movie. In fact, there was a reason it: it was the K-19 submarine that collided with the American submarine Gato, which had pursued the Soviet sub on November 15th, 1969. One has to mention here that the K-19 sub survived owing to the courage of the American sub's captain, who was about to fire an anti-sub torpedo but it was ordered not to launch it.

As far as the historical truth is concerned: The K-19 did have to surface in ice, but it emerged in an opening. The K-447 sub was the first submarine to crack ice with its hull 20 years later, in July of 1981. Only a lunatic would order surfacing through thick ice back in those years. Furthermore, according to the movie, it was the K-19's first time at sea. No one would ever attempt to put a submarine through such an extreme test on its first time out. In addition, when a submarine performs a deep-water submersion, it does not drop like a stone, but stops every 25 meters until it reaches a depth of 100 meters and it stops every ten meters afterwards.

As far as the nuclear breakdown on board the K-19 is concerned. The American movie-makers made a very impressive scene about what happened to the submariners who tried to fix the nuclear reactor. However, symptoms of radiation sickness started showing up four or five hours later, after the breakdown had been taken care of. What was the point of showing scabbed faces? One will assume that the whole movie was meant to be an impressive piece of work.

In the movie, submariners took tubes out of torpedoes in order to assemble the spillage system for the reactor. There was absolutely no need to do this, for there are a lot of such tubes on board every submarine. Yet, crewmembers took tubes out of torpedoes, fuel poured out and a fire broke out in the tenth compartment. There were no torpedoes with fuel on board the K-19. The fire occurred not in the tenth, but in the ninth, compartment, and it happened on February 24th, 1972 v eleven years later. The fire killed 28 people, and 12 crewmembers were isolated in the tenth compartment of the sub for 23 days.

American cinematographers made everyone rush about and bump into each other during the the breakdown. They made the K-19 look absolutely disorderly, although every submariner has a journal of certain instructions for all kinds of emergencies. The movie should not have been advertised as the truest story of the K-19 submarine.

Monday, Sep. 1, 2003. Page 1

Nuclear Submarine Sinks, 9 Men Lost.

By Vladimir Isachenkov
The Associated Press


The K-159 nuclear submarine, which sank in the Barents Sea on Saturday as it was being towed into port, killing nine sailors. Reuters

A nuclear submarine being towed to a scrapyard sank in a gale in the Barents Sea on Saturday, killing nine of the 10 crew aboard in an accident that raised concerns of environmental damage and further dented the navy's prestige.

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said towing procedures had been violated and noted that the K-159 submarine went to the bottom with its conning tower open.

"There were definitely elements of this frivolous Russian reliance on chance, that everything will work out," Ivanov said Sunday while aboard a cruiser monitoring search operations. "This confirms yet again the simple truth that all instructions and orders must be taken seriously."

Ivanov's apparent frustration echoed the reaction of President Vladimir Putin, who said Saturday during a trip to Sardinia that the sinking "testifies to how the sea demands discipline, it does not forgive any kind of blunder or mistake."

The exact circumstances of the sinking remained unclear Sunday. The submarine went down about 3 nautical miles (5.5 kilometers) northwest of Kildin Island off the Kola Peninsula, where Russia abuts Norway and Finland. That is the same general area where the Kursk nuclear submarine sank almost exactly three years ago after being torn apart by two explosions while on maneuvers, killing all 118 aboard.

Interfax, citing unidentified navy officials, said a second derelict submarine was being towed in the area Saturday and its presence apparently confused rescuers. That submarine reached port safely, Interfax said.

NTV television quoted a navy source as saying the K-159 crew had been told to abandon ship about 90 minutes before the sinking, but that a rescue helicopter mistakenly went to the other submarine.

The Chief Military Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation and said officers "didn't show enough resolution in carrying out rescue operations," Interfax reported.

Ivanov said that Sergei Zhemchuzhny, commander of the submarine unit based in Gremikha, was being relieved of his duties pending investigation.

He said Sunday that radiation levels in the sinking area remained normal and "there is no cause for concern now and there should not be in the future."

The two nuclear reactors of the 40-year-old submarine have been shut down since it was decommissioned in 1989.

Environmentalists, however, warned of a possible radiation leak that could contaminate the busy fishing area.

"The risks are very high," said Alexander Nikitin, a retired navy captain who heads the St. Petersburg branch of the Bellona Foundation, a Norwegian environmental group.

Nikitin said that the uranium fuel, which was loaded into the submarine's reactors some 30 years ago, was far more radioactive and dangerous than a fresher load would be.

He harshly blamed the navy for moving the crumbling, leaky submarine to the scrapyard some 350 kilometers away from its base, saying that its nuclear reactors should have been removed prior to the journey.

"They have chosen the cheapest and the worst option," said Nikitin, whose report on nuclear risks posed by the navy led to his arrest in 1996 and 11-month imprisonment on treason charges.

He was acquitted in 1999.

The K-159 sank about 4 a.m. Saturday after four pontoons attached for the towing operation were ripped of the sub during a battering storm. It was en route to a scrapping facility in Polyarnoye, 350 kilometers above the Arctic Circle.

Rescue ships rushed to the site and arrived about 90 minutes after the sinking.

Navy deputy chief Admiral Viktor Kravchenko said one sailor was rescued and the bodies of two others were pulled out of the 10-degree Celsius waters.

Ivanov said Saturday evening, "I'm forced to recognize ... that it is impossible to find any of the remaining seven crew members alive."

He said Sunday that the submarine had been located at a depth of 238 meters, lying on its side.

Later, after meeting with surviving sailor Lieutenant Maxim Tsibulsky and families of the dead sailors, Ivanov said, "I have made a decision to ban the towing of such submarines to scrapyards in such a manner until further notice."

Ivanov also said, however, that the men aboard the K-159 were not to blame.

"There are no complaints against you. ... You were only a witness," Ivanov said in a televised meeting with Tsibulsky, who lay in a Northern Fleet hospital bed appearing healthy but exhausted.

Russia has decommissioned about 189 nuclear-powered submarines over the past 15 years, but officials say 126 of those still are at docks with nuclear fuel in their reactors, creating international concern about leaks and the possibility of nuclear materials being obtained by other nations or terrorists.

In contrast to the Kursk disaster, when the government issued scarce and conflicting information, the Defense Ministry quickly reported the K-159 accident.

"Our military and political leadership has at least learned some lessons from the Kursk tragedy," retired Captain Igor Kurdin, the head of the St. Petersburg-based Submariners' Club, said in a telephone interview.

The Kursk was raised from the Barents Sea floor in October 2001 by a Dutch consortium in an unprecedented salvage effort.

Ivanov said the K-159 also would be raised.

Retired Admiral Eduard Baltin recalled that the K-159 was already taking water when it made its last mission in 1983. He said on Ekho Moskvy radio that the navy should not have placed the crew on the submarine, saying that "it was like putting them in a barrel full of holes."

The K-159 entered service in 1963. A November-class submarine, it was intended for attacking enemy ships with conventional or low-yield nuclear torpedoes. "It was a workhorse of the Cold War," Kurdin said.

A submarine of the same type, the K-8, caught fire and sank in April 1970 in the Bay of Biscay during naval maneuvers, killing 52.

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Russian Nuclear-Powered Submarine Sinks in Barents Sea.

Pravda.Ru
Andrey Mikhailov
Submarina.Ru photo
08/30/2003 15:17


If no one died, it would not be considered as an accident.

Russian nuclear submarine K-159 sank in the Barents Sea. The tragedy took place at 4 a.m. three miles north-west of Kildin Island, as the cruiser was being towed to a scrapyard. The submarine sank at the depth of 170 meters. Members of the towing crew were killed, one submariner - Maksim Tsibulsky - managed to stay alive.

According to the information from KSF.Ru online news agency, the temperature of the water on the site of the accident is ten degrees above zero. A human being can stay safe for ten minutes in such cold water without protective gear, the maximum is 45 minutes. There is practically no hope to save anyone else of the crew. The number of victims reportedly counts nine men.

K-159 nuclear-powered submarine (project 627A, Kit (Whale), "November" on NATO-s classification, class SSN) was built in 1962. The nuclear fuel from the reactor's active zone was unloaded 15 years ago, the sub was removed from the Russian Naval arsenal on July 16th 1989. The towing of the submarine to SRZ-10 factory (to be dismantled there) started on August 28th 2003. The sub was being towed on four pontoons from its base in the town of Gremikha. The pontoons were torn off by the fierce storm on August 29th overnight. "The submarine lost steadiness and sank," a spokesman for the Russian Defense ministry said.

There were ten crewmembers on board the submarine. One of them was saved, two dead bodies were found, according to the latest information. Rescue works are continuing. Russian Naval Commander Vladimir Kuroyedov left for the headquarters of the Northern Navy. Vessels the Pamir and the Altay, An-26 and Il-38 aircraft are conducting the rescue works.

Several high-ranking officials have already commented on the accident. "There is no need to raise the submarine urgently, because the active zone of the nuclear reactor was unloaded," Naval Admiral Vladimir Chernavin stated. The submarine did not carry nuclear weapons aboard, the nuclear reactor is safe. Most likely, the submarine will remain on the sea bottom, because the sub is useless and it does not pose an environmental danger. In fact, it was the metal scrap that sank, and the state will not have to pay to dismantle it.

Project 627A is the project of the very first domestic nuclear-powered submarines. If no one died, it would not be even considered as an accident. Even if crewmembers managed to jump overboard, they would not be able to stay alive for long in the freezing and storming water of the Barents Sea. K-159 is the first sunken submarine of the mentioned project.

The fate of another nuclear Soviet submarine of the same project, K-8, was dramatic as well. According to the information from Arkhangelsk-based NOMKA news agency, the first breakdown on board the submarine took place in October of 1960, when the leaking reactor radiated 13 crewmembers. K-8 sank on April 12th 1970, during a large-scale military exercise. The vessel was not prepared to participate in the exercise. A fire broke out on board the sub, the electric power was lost, but the cruiser surfaced. Diesel generators were out of order, it was impossible to use them. The crew was doing its best to save the submarine, but the efforts failed. The cruiser sank at the depth of 4,680 meters, 52 members of the crew were killed, others were saved. All 627A project submarines were removed from the naval arsenal in 1989-1992.

Tuesday, Sep. 2, 2003. Page 3

Few Clues as Sub Hunt Goes On.

Moscow Times
By Simon Saradzhyan


Navy vessels plowing the waters of the Barents Sea above the sunken submarine. AP

Navy vessels plowed the rough and cold waters of the Barents Sea above the sunken K-159 submarine Monday in what the Northern Fleet described as a "search operation" -- despite an admiral's admission that the missing seven crewmembers were probably trapped inside the sub.

Four rescue vessels and three warships were involved in the search, Northern Fleet spokesman Vladimir Navrotsky said Monday. Navy aircraft also were scouring the shores of nearby Kildin Island, he told Interfax.

The Project 627A (NATO codename: November) sank 5.5 kilometers northwest of Kildin off the Kola Peninsula on Saturday. The decommissioned nuclear submarine was being towed from the Gremikha base to a scrapyard in Polyarny when steel cables strapping it to four pontoons snapped in rough waters. The submarine sank at 2:00 a.m.

Three of the submarine's crewmembers were later plucked out of the water. Only one of them, Lieutenant Maxim Tsibulsky, survived. The remaining seven sailors most probably went down with the mothballed submarine, which is laying at a depth of 238 meters, navy chief of staff Admiral Viktor Kravchenko told a select pool of Russian reporters in Moscow on Monday.

Kravchenko, offering the first explanation as to why a crew had been on board the submarine at all, said they were making sure the submarine's compartments remained waterproof. He said pre-voyage tests at the Gremikha base had indicated that they were waterproof.

Kravchenko said it remained unclear why the seven missing crewmembers apparently had not abandoned the submarine. The submarine went down with its conning tower open, and Strana.ru reported that Monday that the towing ship had radioed the crew to leave 40 minutes before the sinking.

Kravchenko said the submarine, which has a displacement of 3,000 tons, was not an environmental hazard, saying its reactor was shut down and sealed when it was decommissioned in 1989.

He said the vessel will be retrieved and scrapped, but not earlier than next year and without the assistance of foreign companies. Russian television showed hazy images of the sunken submarine filmed by an underwater robot.


Maxim Tsibulsky, the sole survivor of the accident, shown on television on Sunday. AP

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Sunday that the submarine was not being towed in accordance with navy rules but maintained that the 10-member crew was not to blame. Military prosecutors, who are investigating the accident, have asked Ivanov to suspend the commander of the Gremikha base's decommissioned submarines unit, Sergei Zhemchuzhnov, which he did Sunday.

A retired submarine commander raised questions Monday about the official explanation of the accident.

Igor Kurdin, chairman of the St. Petersburg Club of Submariners, said he strongly doubted that the submarine had a working generator and ventilators to run the waterproof tests at the base. He said it was odd that a crew was then needed to watch out for leaks since they would have been unable to do anything in the event of a leak.

Kurdin said an old submarine like the K-159 should have had a mooring crew on deck to monitor the pontoons during the trip but no sailors inside.

Kravchenko referred to the K-159 sailors as the "mooring crew," and Kurdin said he was puzzled to hear this. He said he usually had three -- but never 10 -- sailors when he served as a mooring crew commander for six of his 20 years in the navy.

The decay of the infrastructure at Gremikha -- a one-time submarine base that was downgraded to a junkyard after the breakup of the Soviet Union -- might have led to the accident as well, Kurdin said. In Soviet times, Gremikha had the equipment to unload the fuel, seal the submarine and fill its canisters with a buoyant substance that ensured it could be safely towed to a scrapyard with no crew on board, he said.

Apart from Kravchenko's restricted news conference and the Northern Fleet spokesman's comments to local news agencies, there was little opportunity for reporters on Monday to fill in the holes in the official accounts of the tragedy.

The rescued sailor was kept under wraps at a Northern Fleet hospital, and his father complained Monday on television that he has not been able to visit his son yet.

15:02 2003-09-11

Nuclear submarine K-159 to be raised in summer 2004.

The nuclear submarine K-159, which sank in the Barents Sea on August 30, will be raised in the summer of 2004. As a Rosbalt correspondent reports, this was announced yesterday by Deputy Commander of the Russian Navy Mikhail Barskov. He said that plans are already underway for raising the submarine. 'Once the plan is ready we will confirm the dates for raising the vessel,' he said. However, he added that the raising of the submarine will depend on the weather next summer but he did confirm that the manoeuvre will be carried out exclusively by Russian experts, without the help of foreign companies. The Kursk submarine was raised in 2001 by the Dutch company Mammut.

The K-159 sank three miles to the north-west of the island Kildin and lies on the seabed at a depth of 200 metres. Ten people were onboard the vessel when it sank although one was saved in the rescue mission. The submarine had been out of use since 1989 and had been moored at the port of Gremikha. On August 28 the submarine was towed out of the port and was heading for the scrapyard in the coastal town of Polyarny. However, a storm on the night of August 29th and 30th ripped off the submarine's hulls and the vessel sank.

© RosBalt

Russia to dispose of 15 submarines in 2004

The Russian Journal Daily ^ | 12/29/03 | The Russian Journal Daily Staff

MOSCOW - Russia is in the process of safely disposing of 99 decomissioned submarines. Some 14-15 of the vessels will have been fully disposed of in 2004 at a cost of USD 67 million for the Russian government. The figures were given by Sergei Antilov, Russia's deputy minister for nuclear energy, at a Moscow press conference, a Rosbalt correspondent reported.

Antilov said his ministry, as part of the Northern Dimension initiative, is working out an overall plan for the disposition of the vessels and is counting on increased financing from other countries. Currently, foreign support comes to about USD 20 million a year. The largest part of this is from the US, with Norway also having earmarked about Euro 10 million for the disposition of two vessels, and Britain having recently signed a contract for the disposition of two torpedo boats for about 10 million pounds.

Tiger Submarine Celebrates Tenth Anniversary.

Pravda.Ru
Andrey Mikhailov
01/21/2004 12:12

Foreign submariners call the submarine "the submarine killer"


Nuclear submarine K-157 (Tiger), project 971 (the serial number 833) was first produced at Sevmashpredpriyatie (Russia's Arkhangelsk Region) ten years ago. Seamen say it is "a cat series" of submarines, while the project 971 is officially coded as Shchuka-B (Pike-B) and has the name Shark-2 in the NATO classification.

Main peculiarity of the "cat series" is the noiseless motion. This is the third-generation submarine where the following submarines also belong: Bars, Vepr (Wild Boar), Leopard, Tiger and so on.

The Tiger submarine that is celebrating the anniversary is one of the modern Russian nuclear cruisers with high speed, maneuverability, silent navigation and various high-precision weapons complexes. The performance characteristics of the submarine are in some respects better than their foreign analogs. Foreign submariners call the submarine "the submarine killer". Last year, Tiger submarine underwent repairs at the shipyard in Severodvinsk and got back to the base. Today, the Tiger crew is ready to carry out new missions.

Submarine Down.

As Russian cinema looks for new patriotic themes, a film with hints of the 'Kursk' tragedy paves the way.

MoscowTimes.Ru
By Tom Birchenough

The mood at last Wednesday's Moscow premiere of Vladimir Khotinenko's "72 Meters" was understandably somber. With naval bands and officers in the audience, the new Russian drama about a sinking submarine inevitably brought back memories of the Kursk submarine tragedy of August 2000, in which 118 crew members died.

But there was also a celebratory feeling in the air; the film, released to general acclaim, focuses on the submariners' bravery and comradeship. Written by Valery Zalotukha, it has great humanity and an unexpected level of comedy. It's not an action film, although there are brilliantly and tensely shot action scenes. Instead, "72 Meters," the title of which refers to the fateful depth at which the vessel is lodged, brings the past lives and present relations of those trapped in its hull to the surface.

As it happens, the novel on which the film is based -- written by Alexander Pokrovsky, himself an ex-submariner -- was written long before the events of the Kursk, and, according to Khotinenko, its appeal is broader.

"This is a story of people who find themselves in a critical situation and show their very best qualities," the director said. "Here, there is some level of allegory, connected to what is happening today in Russia. A lesson on how to decide at a moment when a moral choice is paramount. A human being, above all, must remain a human being."

Khotinenko agreed to take on the project after reading social research commissioned by Channel One, which produced the film via Nikita Mikhalkov's Tri-Te studio, indicating that viewers would welcome a film on the subject -- even without a happy ending.

The comedic elements stand in sharp contrast to the more serious moments, raising their emotional power. Scenes shot in light sepia flash back to the life of vessel and crew in Sevastopol, focusing on the romantic rivalry between the two best-friend lieutenant heroes; in a hilarious scene from 1991, the vessel's captain (Andrei Krasko) refuses to swear allegiance to the new Ukrainian state, and marches his officers ceremoniously into the water. The appearance of a newcomer onboard before the fateful voyage, an inept researcher brilliantly played by Sergei Makovetsky, also makes for rich comedy.

Soon the crew is re-based in the much harsher clime of the Barents Sea, where most of the location work was done; the scenes inside the flooded submarine were impressively filmed in a specially constructed water-stage at Mosfilm.

Critics have argued that "72 Meters" is part of a general imperative in the Russian film industry (and in the country as a whole) to find new, patriotic themes. There has even been talk, albeit loose, of remaking Soviet-era war films. In "72 Meters," however, there is no external enemy -- only the challenge of accident and natural forces, and the bravery and humanity of those involved.

It's that most welcome, and rare, thing: a highly professional Russian mainstream film, with strong cinematography, unusual standards of editing and an emotional score from veteran Italian film composer Ennio Morricone.

As such, it should reach wide local audiences -- most crucially those under 20 who make up such a large part of Russia's filmgoers. (Here, the comedy can only help.) Its release is on an impressive 110 copies, and it is the first Russian film handled by major distributor Gemini Films.

"We have been looking for this for 10 years," said Gemini's Michael Schlicht, who was impressed by the film before it was edited (and by the fact that some of his suggestions were then taken onboard), and is risking an impressive sum on publicity. A decade ago, Schlicht was involved in promoting screenwriting competitions, with scenarist Zalotukha an early winner.

All leaving the premiere were talking about the ending, which remains open. There is an implication that a rescue attempt may yet save the day (as it does in the original novel), but the audience is also left with the fear, reinforced by memories of the Kursk, that the brave survivors face slow death on the ocean bed.

16:42 2004-02-26

British Minister says Russian technology for dismantling nuclear submarines is unique.

The technology used to dismantle nuclear submarines in Severodvinsk is unique. This was announced to Rosbalt by British Minister for Trade and Industry Nigel Griffiths.

He witnessed the dismantling of two Oscar nuclear submarines at the Zvezdochka plant. When asked about the aim of his visit, the minister stressed that 'last year the UK became the leading investor in Russia. Russian export to the UK has also increased. Today our two countries have a very close partnership. I was also interested to find out how our projects on nuclear submarines are progressing.'

The British minister also met First Deputy Governor of the Arkhangelsk Region Alexander Polikarpov. They discussed the prospects for collaborating in the areas of minerals and natural resources, timber and construction.

© RosBalt

Russian nuclear submarine visits French port.

Interfax. Tuesday, Sep. 21, 2004, 8:26 PM Moscow Time

MOSCOW. Sept 21 (Interfax) - The Russian nuclear submarine Vepr made a stopover at a French port on Tuesday, marking the first ever visit by a Russian nuclear submarine to a foreign port.

"Today for the first time the Russian nuclear submarine Vepr cast its anchor at a foreign port - the main base of the French Atlantic Fleet in the town of Brest," Captain Igor Dygalo, Russian Navy spokesman, told Interfax on Tuesday.

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Vaya con Dios!

http://barentsobserver.com/president-observed-missile-launches.4518310-16149.html

President observed missile launches.

2008-10-13

Russian President Dmitrii Medvedev this Saturday witnessed the nuclear submarine “Tula” test fire a “Sineva” missile in the Barents Sea. Afterwards he went to Arkhangelsk Oblast were he saw the Russian missile forces launch a Topol missile from the Plesetsk Space Centre.

President Medvedev on Saturday saw the Northern Fleet sub “Tula” test fire a “Sineva” missile from the Barents Sea. The missile successfully hit its target 11547 km away in the Pacific, Kremlin.ru reports. The rehearsal named “Dvina” is part of the bigger “Stabilnost 2008” rehearsal. About 5000 sailors, eight surface vessels, five submarines and 11 aircrafts participated in the event.

The president observed the training from aboard Russia’s only aircraft carrier the “Admiral Kuznetsov”. He was in good company, also the Defence Minister Anatolii Serdyukov, Navy Head Commander Vladimir Vysotskii and Northern Fleet commander Nikolay Maksimov was on board the vessel.

After the rehearsal, the president continued to Arkhangelsk Oblast, where he witnessed the successful launch of a “Topol” missile, Kremlin.ru reports.

During the events, the president again confirmed that Russia plans to build a series of new military vessels – cruisers, submarines, as well as aircraft carriers.

-In the 90s we lost a lot, and as you know, we unfortunately did not build anything. Therefore we now have to resurrect the very basis for the construction of aircraft carriers, yes essentially for the whole Navy, because in addition to the cruisers we also need to build new submarines, the president told sailors on board the “Admiral Kuznetsov”.

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Vaya con Dios!