The Russian Defence Minister, Marshal Igor Sergeyev, has denied any major mistakes were made in the strategy employed to rescue the crew of the nuclear submarine Kursk. He also took responsibility for advising President Putin to remain on holiday as the tragedy unfolded.
His attempts to fend off allegations of incompetence from angry citizens and officers in the armed forces will almost certainly fail.
Marshal Sergeyev's position as Defence Minister has come under fire frequently in the past, and he is involved in a major power struggle in the military against senior officers who favour a realistic downgrading of the country's armed forces.
As recrimination began to take over from grief following confirmation that all 118 members of the Kursk crew had lost their lives, Western officials did not echo Marshal Sergeyev's views.
Rear Admiral Einar Skorgen, who commanded the joint Norwegian-British rescue attempts, said Russian bureaucracy had held up the operation.
The Norwegian team, which includes British divers, now faces the choice of becoming involved in attempts to recover the bodies of the Russian sailors, but this could be a very dangerous task. "As far as we're concerned we've done what we could. Entering the submarine via the escape hatch would be distinctly hazardous," Mr Julian Thomson, communications manager for Stolt Offshore, said.
The divers opened the Kursk's outer and inner escape hatches early yesterday. Having discovered the ship was flooded, they then called off their rescue attempts.
Later the commander of Russia's Northern Fleet, Admiral Vyacheslav Popov, officially acknowledged that all members of the crew had died in a statement which read: "The military council of the Northern Fleet is deeply sorrowed and offers its sympathy to the relatives of the dead. The memory of our comrades will live for ever in our hearts and in the history of the Russian navy."
