The mother of a dead Kursk sailor, shown on Western television berating a Russian minister and then being injected with what had been reported to be a tranquilliser, said yesterday that she was only given medication for her heart.
"They gave me a shot in the presence of my husband because I did not feel well. It is my husband who turned to a doctor for help," Nadya Tylik (42), mother of sailor Sergei (25), told AFP from her home town of Vidyayevo.
"I categorically deny that they gave me a shot to stop me from talking," she said, adding that she had a heart condition and that the shot contained "medication for my heart" and not an tranquilliser.
"I can confirm that I was not shot with a tranquilliser," said Ms Tylik.
The mother added angrily that Western media was spreading "lots of lies".
Ms Tylik was shown shouting at Deputy Prime Minister Mr Ilya Klebanov last Saturday for running a poorly-organised Kursk rescue effort.
Someone then administered a shot as she spoke. Ms Tylik fainted moments later.
The footage was widely broadcast on the BBC and extensively written about in the international media, accompanied by commentary suggesting that the Russian navy wanted to hide its embarrassment with the Kursk fiasco by silencing the grieving mother.
Ms Tylik stressed, however, that she was still furious with Russia's bungled rescue effort, which failed to save any of the 118 men aboard the sunken craft after it suffered a catastrophic accident on August 12th.
"I think that the rescue operation was not intense enough," she said.
Meanwhile President Putin called yesterday for the creation of four rescue centres at Russia's main naval bases following the disastrous failure to save the Kursk. The Emergencies Minister, Mr Sergei Shoigu, said after meeting Mr Putin the centres would be created for the Baltic, Pacific Ocean, Black Sea and North Sea fleets.
Programmes providing deepsea rescue have suffered strong budget cutbacks since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Mr Viktor Zakharov, head of the navy's radiation, chemical and biological protection service, said the country's top, deep-sea divers now work on contract for foreign companies.
In a separate development Russian nuclear industry officials sought to reassure the public that the Kursk poses no threat to the environment.
Mr Vladimir Uryvsky, head of the Atomic Energy Ministry's division of navy power plants, said the Kursk's reactors belonged to the third especially-safe generation of nuclear power generators, designed to withstand the most severe shocks.
Mr Uryvsky described the reactors as having only minimal piping for circulation of radioactive substances and a top-notch automatic shutdown system.
A converted Russian SS-18 rocket booster carrying commercial satellites failed to launch just seconds before its scheduled blast off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome yesterday, the Russian Space Agency said.
A spokesman said a programming failure was the likely cause of the automatic shutdown just prior to launch.