No event has served to diminish the international image of post-Soviet Russia more than the demise of the Kursk. The growth of a vicious mafia has its parallels in Western countries. Excessive cronyism in the development of a privatised industrial and services sector has been experienced almost everywhere.
The deceit and callousness shown by senior officials and politicians at the loss of 118 young lives is, however, something that no politician or official would get away with in most countries.
In the aftermath of the tragedy two major issues arise. The first is that of Mr Putin and the support for his presidency. Newspapers and the main independent television channel have excoriated him for his apparent callousness in remaining on holiday at a time of crisis.
His reputation is now at its lowest since his election last March. The war in Chechnya, despite numerous announcements that final victory had been achieved, continues apace. Young Russian soldiers lose their lives daily. The bomb in Moscow's busiest underground street crossing which recently cost the lives of a dozen passers-by had done little to make citizens feel secure when the unthinkable happened in the Barents Sea.
Just four months earlier Mr Putin, as commander-in-chief of Russia's armed forces, had himself pictured on the conning tower of the nuclear submarine Karelia in that same Barents Sea. The celebrated photograph was intended to convey the image of a president linked to the most popular branch of the country's military services.
The navy, despite its lack of finance, had a clean public image. Afghanistan and Chechnya are, after all, completely landlocked areas where only the ground forces can lose prestige.
Mr Putin's enthusiasm to appear in naval uniform in the good times has been matched only by his efforts to avoid being associated with the navy when things go wrong. The major newspapers in Moscow and elsewhere have not been slow to point this out and in doing so have been echoing the views of the public in Moscow and St Petersburg.
But newspapers in Russia have seen their power severely curtailed since the days when Pravda was, almost literally, compulsory reading in the average Russian household. Even Nezavisimaya Gazeta, generally regarded as being among the more influential publications, sells just 50,000 copies, considerably less than any of Ireland's daily newspapers, in a country with 150 million inhabitants.
It is a country of such incredible size, stretching over 11 time zones, that only television can pretend to reach a sizeable proportion of the population. It is here that Mr Putin has a strong advantage over his opponents.
Two of the three major TV channels gave him such unchallenged support in the presidential elections earlier this year that an observer with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe thought it important enough to note this as affecting the freedom and fairness of the poll.
The third, independent, channel, which can be viewed in a limited geographical area, opposed Mr Putin. That it continues to broadcast despite the harassment and temporary imprisonment of its owner, Mr Vladimir Gusinsky, is a measure of the freedom of expression which continues to exist in Russia.
It can be seen, therefore, that Mr Putin has the means at his disposal to wipe out the memory of the current debacle, but he would be advised to pay much greater attention in future to public opinion, particularly at times of national grief such as that engendered by the Kursk tragedy.
The Russian people have undergone enough tragedies over the years with admirable stoicism. They deserve to be treated far better by their leaders, elected and non-elected.
The second issue that arises from the Kursk tragedy concerns Mr Putin's responsibility not only to his own citizens but to the world at large. The Kursk is not only a tomb for its 118-member crew, it has two nuclear reactors on board. One of the few true statements from the Russian authorities in the course of the past week has been that no nuclear leak occurred. This has been confirmed by Norwegian sources.
This does not mean, however, that there is no danger of pollution in the future. The Norwegian environmental agency Bellona has, not for the first time, sounded a warning note. It is not known, the agency reports, how long it has been since the fuel rods have been replaced. In a country with the economic problems of Russia, it is likely that the minimum of expenditure has been involved.
There is no information either on the length of time the Kursk's reactors had been in operation on its fatal cruise. This could have a vital bearing, Bellona's experts state, on the temperature in the reactors after they were shut down. While it is extremely unlikely the reactors could spontaneously re-start, there was, the agency said, a possibility of leakage through cracks in their cladding.
While the lack of professionalism on Russia's part has been rightly condemned, it should be noted that the Barents Sea - despite all the manoeuvres there by nuclear-powered Russian vessels - is by international standards comparatively clean. With a level of just one becquerel per kg of fish caught it is, for example, 10 times less radioactive than the Baltic.
Bellona has had its battles with Russian officialdom. One of its Russian operatives, Capt Alexander Nikitin, still faces charges of high treason for revealing the dangers inherent in haphazardly decommissioned naval reactors.
It should be noted, however, that Bellona points its accusatory finger westwards, too. The following part of its assessment of the current situation makes interesting reading: the radioactivity that can be traced in the Barents Sea has, it states, been "transported there by the Gulf Stream, mainly from the two European reprocessing-plants, Sellafield in England and Le Hague in France".
smartin@irish-times.ie