RUSSIA: Three years after Russia's Kursk submarine mysteriously sank to the Arctic seabed, relatives of the 118 crew who died mourned their memory yesterday, and demanded that navy officials take responsibility for their deaths, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Moscow.
Across Russia, friends, family and comrades of the Kursk's last crew gathered to unveil monuments commemorating the nuclear submarine's last voyage. It ended when an explosion in the torpedo bay sent the vessel to the bottom of the Barents Sea.
In the central Russian city of Kursk, mourners gathered around a slab of the submarine's hull which now stands in the main cemetery, engraved with the names of 12 sailors buried there who perished on what was one of Russia's most advanced hunter-killer warships.
In St Petersburg, relatives stood uneasily alongside navy top brass at the unveiling of a black granite memorial, engraved on one side with the names of 32 victims buried below, and on the other with words from a final note scribbled by one of the doomed crew: "Don't despair".
In the remote Arctic ports, where the Kursk was a regular visitor and source of pride, wreaths were floated over waters where the navy for days botched its attempt to save the sailors, declining international offers of help, and then told the world's press that the crew had actually died soon after the torpedo explosions.
President Vladimir Putin came under rare public fire for failing to immediately return from his holiday to oversee the rescue, which soon became an exercise in damage limitation as the navy's helplessness became obvious.
A deeply opaque official investigation found that leaking torpedo fuel had triggered the explosion on the Kursk, but failed to apportion any blame for Russia's worst nuclear submarine accident.
Several senior naval officers were quietly demoted or sacked, but most quickly found themselves in well-paid desk jobs.
Relatives of the sailors said yesterday they still wanted to know why a faulty torpedo was loaded onto the Kursk, and whether some of the crew could have been saved had the navy acted quicker, or accepted British and Scandinavian offers of help.
Mr Boris Kuznetsov, a lawyer for several relatives planning to take the navy to court, said it was vital for Russia to know what happened to the Kursk.
"Because at the moment we can't answer all the questions, and probably won't ever know all the circumstances of the Kursk tragedy."