He said in the state the compartment was in, it would be impossible to raise it as a whole. 'The seven fragments were raised, we just didn't need to raise anything else.' 'We examined the place where the sub was lying, we examined what was left of the first compartment, we filmed and documented all that,' Barskov said. Vice Admiral Mikhail Barskov told the Interfax news agency on Saturday that he was on the Mayo salvage ship when the hulk of the submarine was raised. The first compartment, which was badly damaged when the Kursk exploded and sank, was cut off and left on the sea floor for possible lifting next summer. Russian Navy spokesman Vladimir Navrotsky has said officials expected to find 30 or 40 bodies, because the others on board were probably atomised by the powerful explosions that sank the submarine.Īt least 23 Kursk sailors survived for several hours in the stern compartments, according to letters found when divers entered the vessel in November 2000 and recovered 12 bodies.Īfterwards the Kursk will be towed to the nearby town of Snezhnogorsk, where nuclear fuel will be extracted from its reactors and its remains fully dismantled.ĭivers retrieved seven fragments of the first compartment of the nuclear submarine Kursk shortly after the wreckage was raised from the Barents Sea floor. Officials will also remove the remains of the crew to prevent damaging contact with the air. It will be stripped of its arsenal of missiles and then sealed. Once in dry dock the submarine will be examined by investigators and forensic experts. They were fulfilling a pledge President Vladimir Putin made to the families of the crew members to bury them on land and allow investigators to inspect the vessel.Įnvironmentalists have expressed concern about possible contamination from the reactors during the salvage operation, but Russian officials say it would be more dangerous to leave the submarine on the seabed. Two Dutch firms raised the Kursk in the $130 million operation. The bow of the Kursk, which was torn apart by the explosions that sank it, remains on the sea bed.īut the rest of the hull of one of the biggest submarines ever built, including its two nuclear reactors, has been hoisted to the surface. (1000 GMT) Interfax news agency reported. The wreck of the vessel arrived fixed beneath the massive barge Giant-4 in the main dock at the village of Roslyakova, near Murmansk at about 2 p.m. The submarine, which sank last year killing all 118 crew, was raised from the bed of the Arctic Barents Sea earlier this month. MOSCOW, Russia - The raised wreck of the Kursk submarine has been brought to dock lashed to a giant barge, Russian news agencies reported.īut it is expected to take another six days of tense and risky work for the docking to be completed and the Kursk to finally be lifted above the surface.

Drydock kursk submarine bodies