Russian state television showed the first pictures of meetings between President Vladimir Putin and the wives and other relatives of the crew of the submarine Kursk yesterday.
On his arrival at the town of Vidyayevo, the closed base of the Northern Fleet, Mr Putin met the wife of the commander of the illfated submarine, Capt Gennady Lyachin, in which 118 sailors died following an incident in the Barents Sea 10 days ago.
Independent NTV television showed Mr Putin, dressed in a black suit, a casual black shirt and no tie, sitting and talking sombrely to the commander's widow, Ms Irina Lyachin.
RTR then showed Mr Putin and the other relatives at a meeting in a packed hall. The atmosphere of this meeting seemed tense.
"When will we get them back, dead or alive? Answer as the president," one woman in the crowd shouted, referring to the bodies of the sailors.
"I will answer as I know it myself," said Mr Putin, but the rest of his remarks were lost because of the bad quality of the tape.
The President, who ordered a day of mourning today, has faced an unprecedented barrage of criticism at home and abroad for not breaking his Black Sea holiday as soon as the disaster became known, and for being slow in requesting foreign aid.
However, the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, Alexiy II, declaring the disaster a national tragedy, sprang to Mr Putin's defence. He said the Kremlin chief had been deeply upset by the crisis.
The military has also been criticised and commanders have taken the unusual step of making public apologies to the relatives. The Northern Fleet commander, Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, pleaded for forgiveness on Monday, speaking from the deck of a battleship, his voice shaking with emotion.
The Defence Minister, Mr Igor Sergeyev, issued a statement yesterday, saying: "We have failed to protect them. Forgive us."
But the Russian media were not in a forgiving mood, and kept up their strong criticism of Mr Putin's leadership, the heaviest he has experienced since taking power at the beginning of the year.
A banner headline in the Vremya MN newspaper read: "The reputation of the Russian leadership is lying on the bottom of the Barents Sea." "Nine days of national shame," said a headline in Novye Izvestia newspaper.
Meanwhile, the British rescue mini-sub, the LR5, headed home untested and the Norwegian divers' vessel left the site after the team decided it could be of no further use.