By the time Western divers opened the hatch, the submarine was fully flooded and no one was left alive. On 1 December 2001, Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov presented a preliminary report to Putin. Ustinov wrote that the entire exercise had been "poorly organized" and that the probe had revealed "serious violations by both Northern Fleet chiefs and the Kursk crew." [109] Shortly afterward, Putin transferred the Northern Fleet commander, Vyacheslav Popov, and his chief of staff, Admiral Mikhail Motsak. [58] As is common in such circumstances, both soon obtained jobs elsewhere in the government. Popov became a representative for the Murmansk region in the Federation Council, and Motsak became deputy presidential envoy for the North-Western Federal District. [70] Popov and Motsak had championed the story that the accident had been caused by a collision with a NATO submarine. When Putin dismissed them, he made a point of repudiating the collision theory. [6] :163 In another example of a lateral transfer, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov had been an outspoken advocate of the theory that the Kursk had collided with a foreign submarine. He had also been in charge of the rescue operation and follow-up inquiry. In February 2002, Putin removed him from his position as Deputy prime minister and made him minister of industry, science, and technology. [109]

They found that dust and ash inside compartment nine severely restricted visibility. As they gradually worked their way inside the compartment and down two levels, Warrant Officer Sergei Shmygin found the remains of Captain-lieutenant Dmitry Kolesnikov. [39] All the men had been badly burned. [16] The divers cut additional holes in the hull over the third and fourth compartments. [41] The Russian divers removed secret documents and eventually recovered a total of 12 bodies from the ninth compartment. This contradicted earlier statements made by senior Russian officials that all the submariners had died before the submarine hit the bottom. [31] They also found the boat's log, but had to suspend work because of severe weather. [28] The rescue teams conducted continuous radiation measurements inside and outside the submarine, but none of the readings exceeded normal ranges. [16] The sinking of the ship, the pride of their submarine fleet, was a devastating blow to the Russian military. [9] Kursk 's participation in the exercise had been intended to demonstrate Russia's place as an important player on the international stage, but the country's inept handling of the crisis instead exposed its weak political decision-making ability and the decline of its military. [12] At 08:51 local time, Kursk requested permission to conduct a torpedo training launch and received the response " Dobro" ("Good"). [6] [11] After considerable delay, the submarine was set to fire two dummy torpedoes at the Kirov-class battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy. At 11:29 local time, [5] the torpedo room crew loaded the first practice Type 65 "Kit" torpedo, (Russian: tolstushka, or "fat girl", because of its size), [12] without a warhead, [13] into Kursk 's number-4 torpedo tube on the starboard side. It was 10.7m (35ft) long and weighed 5t (4.9 long tons; 5.5 short tons). [14] Initial seismic event detected [ edit ] Norwegian Seismic Array seismic readings at three locations of the explosions on the submarine Kursk on 12 August 2000.The Dutch consortium had already severed the submarine's mangled forward section, which was left on the seabed because of concern that it might have broken off and destabilised the lifting. The continued problems that the rescuers had in reaching potential survivors and ongoing conflicting information about the cause of the accident inflamed Russian public opinion. [28] Media described the Russian government's response to the disaster as "technically inept" and their stories as "totally unreliable". [7] Putin meets with families [ edit ] President Putin in a contentious meeting with relatives of the dead sailors in Vidyayevo, during which the families complained about the Russian Navy's response to the disaster The front of the submarine, the Sidon, had been blown apart by an experimental torpedo containing HTP while the men on board were loading it; 13 men died in the blast from the casing of the torpedo. Now, with the help of documents from the original inquiry discovered by the BBC's science programme Horizon, Stradling believes he may have found the explanation for both disasters. At this point a completely uncontrolled reaction with the metal components in that part of the torpedo occurred, bursting the whole casing open like a balloon,' said Stradling.

Fifteen years after the dramatic sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine with the loss 118 lives in August 2000, lawyer Boris Kuznetsov sees the tragedy as a turning point for modern Russia. Vice Admiral Mikhail Motsak, the Russian naval commander overseeing the recovery operation, said the Kursk should arrive in the harbour of the town of Roslyakovo, near Murmansk, at around 12pm Moscow time (0800 GMT) on Wednesday. Rescue divers did not attempt to tap on the hull to signal potential survivors acoustically. [34] However, video evidence seems to suggest otherwise, as it shows Norwegian divers tapping on the aft rescue hatch while the rescue part of the operation was still underway. [36] Their death was quite poignant, for these men often went without a decent salary for their dedicated naval services. To reach the once-attained pedestal of military supremacy and unwanted pride, innocent lives were sacrificed. The submarine was finally salvaged from the seabed, and its remains were raised by the Dutch salvage company a year after the disaster in 2001. Out of the 118 dead, the bodies of 115 members were recovered, providing a much-needed consolation to the crew’s families. Ryazantsev, Valery. "The death of the "Kursk" " (in Russian). Archived from the original on 13 June 2011 . Retrieved 12 February 2014.Despite fears over safety, the Russian Navy and the salvage team said the reactors have been safely shut down and posed no threat to the salvage effort. No holes were cut in the compartment housing the twin nuclear reactors.