Russian Sub Crew Recalls Ordeal

The seven men endured darkness and frigid temperatures for three days until their Russian mini-submarine was freed from the Pacific floor by a British remote-controlled vehicle as oxygen supplies dwindled.

"It was cold, cold, very cold. I can't even describe it," one crew member with reddish hair said as the sailors walked ashore Sunday with dazed looks and bloodshot eyes after their submarine was cut loose from cables that had snagged it.

Commander Ian Riches, the British Royal Navy officer who led the successful operation using the remote-controlled Super Scorpio, hailed the joint rescue mission with the Russian Pacific Fleet as a "marvelous example" of international cooperation.

"It was a difficult operation, but we enjoyed doing it," he said as he arrived ashore at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in the early hours of Monday local time "The team are over the moon that we have got these guys out alive," he added.

But amid the jubilation, Moscow newspapers criticized the Russian navy for waiting more than a day before revealing the submarine accident, accusing it of failing to learn the lessons of the 2000 Kursk submarine disaster.

The men aboard the AS-28 mini-submarine, six sailors and a representative of the company that made the ship, opened the hatch and climbed out without assistance, officials said.

Six were taken to a hospital on the mainland, waving to relatives as they went in. The seventh was kept aboard a hospital ship for unspecified reasons. They appeared to be in "satisfactory" condition, naval spokesman Capt. Igor Dygalo said.

At the edge of the gangplank leading off the ship that brought the crew to shore, the submarine's commander Lt. Vyacheslav Milashevsky held a long and solemn salute, then a slight smile crossed his face.

He was pale but told journalists he felt "fine" before climbing into a van with the others for the trip to the hospital.

Milashevsky's wife, Yelena, said earlier that she was overjoyed upon hearing about the rescue. "I was happy. I cried from happiness. I danced," she told Channel One television.

The men had worn thermal suits to protect them against temperatures of about 40 degrees Fahrenheit and were told to lie flat and breathe as lightly as possible during the rescue effort, officials said. To conserve electricity, lights were turned off and contact with the surface was kept to a minimum.

Russian authorities thanked the British and praised the international rescue effort that included the United States, but the Moscow press on Monday said the crisis once again showed the obsessive secrecy of the Russian military.

The Kommersant daily reported that the news only leaked out after a submariner's wife called a local radio station in Kamchatka anonymously on Friday morning, nearly 24 hours after the mini-sub radioed an emergency signal.

Later that day, Russia asked Japan, Britain and the United States for help.

When the Kursk nuclear submarine sank in August 2000, Russian authorities held off asking for outside assistance until hope was nearly exhausted; all 118 crew members died.

"As with the Kursk, the navy command tried to cover up information about the accident, trying to deal with it themselves," the Gazeta daily wrote. "Only when the situation got critical did the navy top brass appeal to foreign countries for help."

President Vladimir Putin was criticized at the time of the Kursk sinking for reluctance to seek international help and for remaining on vacation as the disaster unfolded. The president has been silent through the present crisis as well, although his spokesman Alexei Gromov said Putin was grateful to all those involved in the rescue operation.

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who supervised the rescue operation from a navy ship, praised the international efforts: "We have seen in deeds, not in words, what the brotherhood of the sea means," he said.

He promised to improve the navy's rescue capabilities.

"The condition of the rescue service is one of our priorities and I will demand that they are maintained on the highest level," Ivanov said at a news conference Monday.

Ivanov said that Russia has a robotic vehicle similar to the Super Scorpio, but it is deployed at the Northern Fleet. He said disassembling it for transport to an airport and then flying it across the sprawling country would have taken longer than it took for the British vessel to arrive.

The United States sent remote-controlled underwater vehicles for the rescue. They arrived several hours later and were not used, but three American divers and a doctor accompanied the British vessel on its mission.

The jubilation came after three tense days that started Thursday when the 44-foot submarine was stranded in 590 feet of water about 10 miles off Kamchatka's east coast.

Russian ships first tried to tow the sub to shallower water where divers could reach it but were able to move it only about 90 yards in Beryozovaya Bay.

The British Super Scorpio, sent in response to Russia's urgent call for help, arrived Saturday and spent six hours the next day cutting away the fishing net cables that had snarled the Russian vessel and its propeller.

Riches said the most nerve-racking point in the operation was when the Russian submarine broke free from the cables and disappeared from the camera's sight before surfacing about 4:26 p.m.

"She moved and we lost her out of the camera...and it was then waiting on the surface waiting for her to arrive. Whether she's going to make it all the way up, we didn't know where she was after that. That was really the tensest moment," he said.

Putin ordered the defense minister to launch an investigation and Kommersant reported Monday, citing military sources, that navy chief Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov faced dismissal after this latest embarrassment for the fleet.

Some naval officials had said the submarine was participating in a combat training exercise when it got caught on an underwater antenna assembly that is part of a coastal monitoring system.

But Riches, the British commander, said the vessel had become tangled in fishing nets, as had been originally reported.