#6
Moscow Times
August 15, 2002
Was Kursk Tragedy Pivotal?
By Pavel Felgenhauer

Two years ago, the Kursk nuclear submarine sank in the Barents Sea during one of the most ambitious naval exercises since the Soviet Union's demise. One hundred and eighteen seamen perished and the tragedy is still an issue of considerable national significance.

Actually, the continued public interest in the Kursk debacle is somewhat strange. In the years leading up to 2000, many servicemen were killed in action in the Caucasus. Thousands more have died or committed suicide in garrisons outside of Chechnya because of accidents with equipment, hazing and the appalling conditions of service. This senseless loss of young lives is, of course, an issue for the families of the dead men, but it never became a national issue as the Kursk did.

Centuries of living in extremely harsh conditions have, apparently, inured Russians to the death of others. This week, many Russian tourists continued to bathe and have fun at the beach only meters away from servicemen who were hauling out of the Black Sea the corpses of other holiday makers who had drowned during catastrophic floods in the Novorossiisk area.

The authorities would surely want the public to forget about the embarrassing Kursk debacle. Neither President Vladimir Putin nor anyone of significance from his government nor the military top brass appeared at any memorial events this week. But the disaster is clearly a very special case.

The government itself did a lot to aggravate the Kursk tragedy. For a week after the disaster, the naval command lied that the Kursk seamen were alive and well under the waves, creating false hopes of a miracle salvation. For many months after the sinking, naval commanders and politicians were putting forward "evidence" that a U.S. submarine deliberately, or by mistake, sank the Kursk -- encouraging bitter xenophobic sentiments.

Now the government bureaucracy says that all the stories of foreign involvement in the sinking of the Kursk were the result of bad sensationalist reporting. But it was the authorities themselves that leaked the foreign submarine yarns to unscrupulous journalists.

The public quite rightly believes it has been fooled and manipulated time and again, and so the latest official narrative is scorned by many. New apocryphal versions of "what really happened" will no doubt continue to appear for years to come.

There is something else that makes the Kursk tragedy a story with many future repercussions. In retrospect it may turn out to have been a turning point in Russia's defense and foreign policy position. During the summer of 2000, the newly elected Putin openly showed his favor toward the navy. The exercises in which the Kursk went down were supposed to show the Kremlin and the world that the navy still had the capability to challenge the West, and primarily the United States, on the high seas.

After the show of strength in the Barents Sea, a formidable flotilla -- including the Kursk and Russia's only aircraft carrier, Kuznetsov -- should have gone to the Mediterranean in the fall of 2000. Moscow planned to reactivate its naval station in Syria, which has been idle since the demise of the Soviet Union, and make it the main operational base of a recreated Mediterranean task force. Putin is reported to have approved the plan and commentators close to the Kremlin say that if it had worked out, Russia's increased military presence in the region could have prevented the collapse of Slobodan Milosevic's regime in Yugoslavia.

Of course, none of these strategic fantasies ever materialized. The Kursk sank, and other ships designated for the Mediterranean deployment were used to salvage the Kursk, to post a permanent naval patrol to guard its wreck from NATO spy ships, etc.

The Kuznetsov is currently in dock for repairs and will not sail again earlier than in 2004. There is no permanent Russian naval presence in the Mediterranean and there are no plans for any large-scale excursions to the area. The naval station in Syria has no business to do. Now Moscow is stationing new ships in the land-locked Caspian Sea, where it actually could play the role of a local naval superpower.

The Kursk debacle revealed once and for all how completely unfounded our admirals' global ambitions were. After that Putin turned away from the navy and its ideas of challenging the United States. It may have been the Kursk tragedy in 2000 that made Putin change his posture toward the West in 2001.

Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.

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