Russian Government Response
"For President Vladimir Putin, the Kursk crisis was not merely a human tragedy, it was a personal PR catastrophe. Twenty-four hours after the submarine's disappearance, as Russian naval officials made bleak calculations about the chances of the 118 men on board, Putin was filmed enjoying himself, shirtsleeves rolled up, hosting a barbecue at his holiday villa on the Black Sea."
The first fax sent from the Russian Navy to the various Press offices said the submarine had "minor technical difficulties". The government downplayed the incident and then claimed bad weather was making it impossible to rescue the people on board.
On 18 August 2000 Nadezhda Tylik, mother of Kursk submariner Lt. Sergei Tylik, produced an intense emotional outburst in the middle of an in-progress news briefing about Kursk's fate. After attempts to quiet her failed, a nurse injected her with a sedative by force from the back, and she was removed from the room, incapacitated. The event, caught on film, caused further criticism of the government's response to both the disaster, and how the government handled public criticism of said response.
According to Raising Kursk broadcast by the Science Channel:
In June of 2002... the Russian government investigation into the accident officially concluded that a faulty torpedo sank Kursk in the Summer of 2000.
Read more about this topic: Russian Submarine Kursk Explosion
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