Minister blames carelessness for Russian submarine disaster

The Russian defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, blamed "frivolous" Russian carelessness yesterday for the death of nine crew members after their nuclear submarine sank off the coast of north-west Russia.

The sub was being towed to a naval scrapyard and sank with its conning tower open. There are believed to be seven submariners on board the vessel now sitting at the bottom of the Barents sea. Two other crew members were found dead in the water. One seamen was picked up alive.

The captain in charge of the towing operation was suspended from his post yesterday and questioned by the military prosecutor's office.

"There were definitely elements of this frivolous Russian reliance on chance, that everything will be okay," Mr Ivanov said yesterday from a navy cruiser in the Barents sea monitoring search operations.

The disaster has underlined the desperate state of the Russian navy and all its armed forces. It comes three years after the sinking of the Kursk submarine in the same sea, in which 118 crew members died.

The K-159 attack submarine was on the third day of a voyage along the Kola peninsula to the scrapyard at Polyarny when severe weather on Saturday morning ripped off the pontoons attached to the sub, tipping the vessel over, and sending it to the bottom of the sea.

Leaving the conning tower open was just one example of negligence, investigators said.

"All the imaginable safety rules were broken during the towing," said Russia's deputy navy chief, Admiral Viktor Kravchenko.

"The sea does not excuse nor forgive such carelessness," said Russian navy chief Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov.

The sinking has focused attention on Russia's ageing fleet of nuclear powered submarines, 126 of which lie in port. They pose a possible environmental hazard as they wait for funds so they can be safely dismantled.

Although Russian officials said that readings show no sign of radiation leaks from the K-159, environmentalists warned that unless the submarine was raised radiation from its nuclear reactor would almost certainly contaminate the sea.

"Water can easily come in and wash out the radioactivity," said Igor Kudrik, a researcher for the Norwegian environmental group Bellona, speaking from Oslo, saying an investigation was needed to judge whether the reactor could withstand the water pressure.

"There is radioactive fuel aboard and this is dangerous."