Moscow - The widow of the captain of the ill-fated Russian nuclear submarine Kursk has resigned from a state commission set up to compensate relatives of the 118 sailors who lost their lives, Seamus Martin reports. Citing misuse of funds, Mrs Irina Lyachina, in a letter to the popular newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, claimed that nothing had been done to provide immediate assistance to the families of the crew.
President Putin has responded by instructing the commander-in-chief of Russia's naval forces, Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedog, to investigate the distribution of money collected throughout Russia and internationally and to meet Mrs Lyachina as soon as possible. The 10-member commission included nine representatives of the Northern Fleet which had been accused of inefficiency in the operation to rescue the Kursk.
Exploratory work on the possible lifting of the Kursk from the bottom of the Barents Sea began yesterday but official sources expressed concern that the proposed operation might be too difficult and too costly.
But the Deputy Prime Minister Mr Ilya Klebanov, the Kremlin's man in charge of the Kursk salvage operation, maintains that the recovery operation is going ahead despite delays caused by bad weather in the Barents Sea.