The main thing Russia's leaders have learned since the 'Kursk' sinking is media savvy, writes DANIEL McLAUGHLIN
RUSSIANS YESTERDAY marked 10 years since the sinking of the Kursksubmarine, a disaster that was woefully mishandled, as they question their leaders' response to the wildfire crisis.
An investigation found that leaking torpedo fuel triggered huge explosions inside the nuclear-powered Kursk, which was one of the Russian navy's most advanced vessels, ripping a hole in its hull and leading to the death of all 118 sailors on board.
Officials were slow to reveal any news of the Kursk, and then claimed that it had had a minor technical problem and that contact had been made with the crew.
Vladimir Putin, who had become Russia’s president earlier in 2000, was shown on television enjoying a family barbecue at his Black Sea villa while desperate attempts were made to reach the stricken submarine, which was lying more than 100m down in the Barents Sea.
Russian attempts to enter the Kurskfailed and offers of help from abroad were only accepted after several days had been lost.
When officials met distraught relatives of the crew, the mother of one sailor furiously accused them of lying about the situation.
A doctor quickly stepped forward and injected her with a sedative, and she was taken away. Television footage of the moment only fuelled suspicion of a state cover-up.
British and Norwegian divers finally entered the vessel eight days after the blast, and confirmed that everyone inside was dead. Russian officials said they had probably perished within minutes of the explosion, but a note was later found on the body of one submariner, saying that 23 men had actually survived the blast. It is not clear when they finally succumbed to suffocation.
The final report on the Kurskexposed appalling irresponsibility and incompetence in the Russian navy, but no one was sacked as a direct result. A year later, several senior naval officers were fired, but the Kurskdebacle was not given as the reason. When asked what had really happened to the much vaunted cruise-missile carrier, Mr Putin replied glibly: "It sank."
The loss of the Kursknot only exposed deep flaws in the Russian military, but showed how Soviet-style suspicion, obfuscation and buck-passing were rife among those who ran the new Russia.
Russia's response to this summer's devastating wildfires has sounded several bleak echoes of the Kursktragedy.
One was in Putin, now prime minister, somewhat sarcastically praising tanned Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov for belatedly returning from his holiday to deal with a crisis that has caused the smog-bound capital’s death rate to double.
Another was in officials’ apparent reluctance to release such medical information until forced to do so by the grim tales being told by doctors and ambulance workers on the internet.
President Dmitry Medvedev sacked several top naval officers for negligence when wildfires destroyed part of a base outside Moscow, after the military had denied reports about the incident.
The deadly fires have also laid bare the fact that Putin, after 10 years in power, has failed to modernise Russia. That failure is apparent in the woeful lack of preparation for such a disaster, the absence of sufficient equipment to tackle it and in the collapse of forestry controls that mitigated the risk of catastrophic fire.
What has improved since the Kurskdisaster is Putin's media savvy.
Having dithered, vacationed and barbecued during the submarine crisis, he is now seen daily on national television promising to compensate residents of fire-scorched villages, lecturing subordinates and even flying in a water-bombing plane over blazing fields.
Putin’s PR men trust that his carefully cultivated image as a macho man of the people will help him emerge unscathed from the crisis ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections and a possible bid to return to the presidency in 2012.
And although criticism of Russia’s ruling duo is increasingly visible in some newspapers and on the internet, state domination of the media ensures that the masses rarely hear it.
“The two are in a very strong public relations drive,” said leading pollster Lev Gudkov.
“Putin goes up in the plane, puts out fires, Medvedev sacks the little scapegoats, they hand out money and the public likes it.”