Russian Sub Crew Safe, Thankful

The seven men endured darkness and frigid temperatures for three days until their Russian mini-submarine was freed Sunday 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 with dazed looks and bloodshot eyes after their vessel was cut loose from cables that had snagged it.

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

Six were taken to a hospital on the mainland for examination, 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. Another crew member in the van looked from side to side, gazing at the green trees and gray skies.

Milashevsky's wife, Yelena, said earlier that she was overjoyed at news the crew had been rescued. "My feelings danced. I was happy, I cried," she told Channel One television.

The United States had also sent remote-controlled underwater vehicles for the rescue, but they arrived several hours after the British vehicle and were not used.

"I can only thank our English colleagues for their joint work and the help they gave in order to complete this operation within the time we had available, that is, before the oxygen reserves ran out," Rear Adm. Vladimir Pepelyayev, deputy head of the navy's general staff, told reporters in Moscow.

Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who went to Kamchatka to supervise the operation, praised the international efforts and said, "We have seen in deeds, not in words, what the brotherhood of the sea means."

President Vladimir Putin had made no public comment about the mini-sub drama by Sunday afternoon.

The red-and-white-striped sub surfaced at around 4:26 p.m. local time, some three days after becoming stranded in 600 feet of water off the Pacific Coast. It was carrying six sailors and a representative of the company that manufactured it.

Earlier, Russian ships had tried to tow the sub and its entanglements to shallower water where divers could reach it, but were able to move it only about 60-100 yards in the Beryozovaya Bay about 10 miles off the Kamchatka coast.

Then, a British remote-controlled Super Scorpio cut away the cables that had snarled the 44-foot mini-submarine. Once the obstructions were removed, there was a last spasm of anxiety as the submarine remained still.

"Then after two or three minutes, it broke free and within three minutes it surfaced," Ivanov said.

The British vehicle was sent after the Russian navy made an urgent appeal for international help--unlike during the August 2000 sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk, when authorities held off asking for outside assistance for days. All 118 aboard the Kursk died.

The men aboard the small submarine waited out tense hours as rescuers raced to free them before the vessel's air supply ran out. The sailors put on thermal suits to protect them against temperatures of about 40 degrees Fahrenheit and were told to lie flat and breathe as lightly as possible, officials said. To conserve electricity, the submarine's lights were kept off and there was only sporadic contact with the surface.

"The crew were steadfast, very professional," Pepelyayev said on Channel One television. "Their self-possession allowed them to conserve the air and wait for the rescue operation."

Officials said the mini-submarine was participating in a combat training exercise Thursday when it got caught on an underwater antenna assembly that is part of a coastal monitoring system. The system was anchored with a weight of about 66 short tons, according to news reports.

Russia's cash-strapped navy apparently lacks rescue vehicles capable of operating at the depth where the sub was stranded.

Putin's silence about the sub crisis echoed his stance during the sinking of the Kursk, when he remained on vacation as the disaster unfolded. Critics said he appeared either callous or ineffectual.

The new crisis indicated that Putin's promises to improve the navy's equipment apparently have had little effect. He was sharply criticized for his slow response to the Kursk crisis and reluctance to accept foreign assistance.

CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips reports that security concerns were a major reason the Russians were so reluctant to bring foreign rescuers during the Kursk emergency. This time they seem to have placed the lives of the sailors first.

Still, Phillips reports, this is a very sensitive area, full of high-tech equipment.

New criticism arose within hours of Sunday's rescue. Dmitry Rogozin, head of the nationalist Rodina party in the lower house of parliament, said he would demand an assessment from the Military Prosecutor's Office of the navy's performance in the incident, the Interfax news agency reported.

Rogozin said he wants to know why Russia has not acquired underwater vehicles similar to the ones provided by Britain and the United States and "why fishing nets and cables litter the area of naval maneuvers."

"It appears the naval command is not in control of the area of naval exercises," he said, according to Interfax.