President Putin reveals cause of Russia's biggest submarine disaster
A week before the presidential election, Russian President Vladimir Putin shared rare information about a series of issues of the country as well as his own. The Russian leader mentioned the cause of the Kursk submarine explosion disaster.
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| Russian Navy submarine Kursk. Photo: AFP |
“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, we faced a lot of economic and social difficulties, and of course the military was no exception. The Kursk submarine disaster was an indication of the general state of the military at that time,” Mr. Putin said in the recently released documentary “Putin.”
The Russian leader said the disaster happened when he had just taken office.
“I didn’t even know about some major exercises. The then Russian defense minister (Igor Sergeyev) called me and said that we had lost a submarine but had found it and started work on it. At that time we didn’t know how the disaster happened, but of course everything became clear later,” Putin said.
The Russian leader also confirmed that the results of investigations related to the Kursk submarine showed that the largest submarine disaster in Russian history was caused by an explosion in the torpedo room of the ship. The explosion caused a fire and detonated the ammunition on board.
The Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sank on August 12, 2000, in the Barents Sea. According to the investigation report, the first explosion was caused by a fuel leak inside the ship’s fourth torpedo launch area. The explosion killed all 36 Russian servicemen. About 140 seconds later, a fire caused at least five “combat ready” warheads to explode.
Meanwhile, there are still many speculations that the ship was attacked by an enemy submarine.
The Kursk disaster was one of the world's deadliest submarine disasters, second only to the US Navy's USS Thresher submarine disaster that killed 129 sailors.