A ship carrying a British mini-submarine was yesterday steaming across the Barents Sea from Norway at the start of an intensified international effort to save the 118 sailors trapped aboard the stranded Russian Kursk nuclear submarine.
With fears high that their oxygen may have run out, no signs of life and the possibility that fatal onboard explosions may have triggered the accident, Mr Mikhail Kasyanov, the Russian Prime Minister, yesterday told a cabinet meeting in Moscow that the situation was "close to catastrophic".
Russian rescue efforts continued through the day without any reported success. British experts emphasised that they were unlikely to be in position to begin operations before Saturday lunchtime, and Norwegian deepsea divers were unlikely to arrive before late on Sunday.
There was growing criticism in the Russian press yesterday of the low profile of Mr Vladimir Putin, the Russian President. The tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda carried a headline asking "Why has the President been silent?" amid a growing feeling that Russia should have moved more quickly to seek international help before its request on Wednesday.
Kommersant, a business daily controlled by Mr Boris Berezovsky, the influential businessman who is attempting to launch a political opposition to the Kremlin, suggested that Mr Putin was keeping a low profile because he saw no benefit in becoming more closely involved.
Poor weather, strong currents and the tilt of the submarine on the seabed that has made docking with one of its hatches impossible have all been blamed for the rescue failures so far. But the weather is now improving.
The Russian naval vice-chief of staff, Admiral Alexander Pobozhy, suggested there could be sufficient oxygen in the submarine to last two to three weeks. He was attending a meeting on technical aspects of the operation yesterday at NATO headquarters in Brussels. However, the navy said it had not detected any noises which could indicate the crew was still alive since Tuesday, three days after the accident happened.
Mr Ilya Klebanov, a deputy prime minister, returned to the closed port base of Severmorsk, from where rescue efforts are being co-ordinated, to chair a meeting on how to rescue the sailors, after briefing Mr Putin during his holiday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. During the day Mr Putin held a series of meetings unrelated to the rescue.
Meanwhile, state RTR television said in the first report from a rescue ship in the Barents Sea that video footage from underneath the water showed severe damage to the front of the Kursk, something not all of the crew could have survived. The RTR reporter said film taken by a deep-water rescue capsule showed the vessel had suffered severe damage.
"The submarine, we can say now, has suffered severe damage, very serious damage in the front section. Water flooded the front in a flash and the command centre . . . was destroyed in a moment," the correspondent said.
"This is tragic news, when so much water gets into the sub, it is impossible to avoid casualties," he said.
The footage was not shown and officials were reluctant to say what had caused the damage.
The television showed pictures of a relatively calm sea, but the correspondent said visibility at depth was still poor because of strong currents.
British naval experts have seen video footage of the Kursk lying on the seabed to help them plan the rescue operation. "We can say that it was a high-energy explosion because Russian submarines are very strongly built," a spokesman said.
He added that the submarine was listing on the seabed by no more than 20 degrees and possibly as little as 12 degrees - meaning that the submersible should be able to dock with the escape hatch.
He added that the LR5 was well-equipped to cope with the strong currents on the sea bed which had hampered previous rescue attempts.
Diagrams of the escape hatch seen by British experts had shown it was compatible with the "mating skirt" attached to the bottom of the submersible, the spokesman said.
The LR5 submersible, described by officials as an "underwater helicopter", will attempt to dock with the Kursk and ferry up to 16 crew members at a time up to the surface.