Robert Moore: Kursk: Putin's First Crisis and the Russian Navy's Darkest Hour

Even if the AS-28 was a small submersible, not a nuclear-powered attack submarine, the rescue in Kamchatka was an impressive example of international naval cooperation. But late in 2017, on the other side of the world, there was a sharp reminder of the constant peril of routine submarine operations, and of the limitations of search-and-rescue capabilities.

With a crew of forty-four, the diesel-powered submarine ARA San Juan was two hundred miles off the coast of Argentina and making her way from the port of Ushuaia to her home base at Mar del Plata. The crew had reported on 15 November that sea water had leaked into the forward storage batteries. It had ignited a fire that was quickly extinguished, and the commanding officer signalled that the problem was resolved and the San Juan would continue her journey home for repairs.

An ominous silence followed. By 17 November, the alarm was raised that communication with the submarine had been lost. The days that followed were reminiscent of the emotional events that played out in Russia over the Kursk disaster. Family members of the San Juan sailors complained of misinformation, of being kept in the dark, and of having their hopes repeatedly raised and then dashed. Argentina’s defence ministry reported that there had been attempts at communications by the submarine crew using a satellite phone. That was later discredited.

The missing sailors’ wives and parents kept up an anguished vigil as they waited for news, pinning flags to a fence alongside the naval base. On 1 December, officials announced that there was no chance that the crew could still be alive. Argentina’s navy said that it was now a search for wreckage, not survivors. Relatives begged the rescuers to keep looking, refusing to accept that the San Juan was lost.

Analysis by specialists at the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) revealed two hydro-acoustic stations had detected ‘abnormalities’ consistent with an explosion. That anomaly was likely the sound of the giant pressures of the deep ocean crushing the German-built submarine. Among the sailors who were lost was Eliana Maria Krawczyk, Argentina’s first female submarine officer.

The loss of the San Juan was the most significant submarine disaster since the Kursk , and to Moscow’s credit, Russia responded with considerable resources to help Argentina locate the wreck. Its oceanographic vessel Yantar and various Russian submersibles were engaged in the multinational effort. When the US pulled back its rescue assets in January 2018, the Russians were still plying the lonely waters of the South Atlantic, looking for the needle in a haystack, in this case a diesel submarine seventy metres in length in a search zone that covered half a million square kilometres of wild ocean. ‘We definitely understand the grief of the submariners’ families,’ Putin noted with considerable understatement, no doubt recalling his own visceral experiences confronting the raw emotions of the Kursk families in Vidyaevo in August 2000.

With the passage of time, the wounds of the Kursk tragedy have begun to heal and the memories of that traumatic summer are receding. The Northern Fleet has benefited from an infusion of funds from Moscow and its prestige has been boosted by a successful projection of naval power into the Mediterranean during Russia’s intervention in the Syrian war. A new generation of highly capable Yasen-class attack submarines is being built. There are considerable fears in the US Navy that Russian torpedo advances are far outpacing American technology. Northern Fleet commanders also have a fresh strategic goal: to dominate the resource-rich Arctic waters to their north, which are likely to become ever more accessible and commercially valuable as global warming accelerates and the polar ice melts.

But the Kursk tragedy still sometimes emerges from the shadows to gnaw at Russia’s conscience. On 17 March 2009, the Russian journalist Tatyana Abramova visited a scrap metal merchant on the edge of Murmansk. She was taken aback by the sight that confronted her.

The command tower of the Kursk submarine, the main structure rising from the hull, stood there in the spring snow, rusting and neglected, the paint of the red and white double-headed Russian eagle faded, but still clearly visible. The most iconic and instantly recognizable part of the submarine, retrieved at such cost from the ocean floor, was being hawked for scrap metal.

Abramova’s articles, written in the newspaper Murmanskiy Vestnik , triggered widespread introspection about the legacy of the Kursk disaster. Why hadn’t the Russian state and the Northern Fleet saved and treasured this section of the submarine? How could the memory of the summer of 2000 fade so quickly? The Kremlin wanted to forget the Kursk , like it wanted to forget other mishaps, whether the Beslan school massacre or the Moscow theatre siege . As Abramova wrote, ‘The situation causes shame and anxiety because the indifference is deeper than the Barents Sea’.

Prodded by the negative headlines and the outrage of the local community, the admirals of the Northern Fleet finally found the funds and agreed to renovate the neglected command tower of the submarine and transform it into a memorial for the 118 lost souls of the Kursk . Today, with a fresh coat of paint, it sits next to the gold-domed Church of Our Saviour on the Water, overlooking the brutalist Soviet architecture of Murmansk. Just visible beyond is the choppy ice-free Barents Sea. The memorial lies 350 miles from the shipyard where the great submarine was built, and just a hundred miles from where her valiant sailors lost the only battle they ever fought.