RUSSIAN FLEET ADMIRAL SUSPENDED

Corrective action has been taken by President Vladimir Putin as a result of the sinking of submarine K-159. Admiral Gennady Suchkov, head of the Russian Northern Fleet, has been removed from his position due to a series of preventable mistakes that caused the deaths of nine submariners.

The 40-year-old K-159 submarine sank in the Barents Sea in bad weather on 30 August as it was being towed to a scrapyard. Three of the 10 crew escaped from the decommissioned submarine and were plucked from the freezing waters. But only one survived.

Suchkov was blamed for three failures: fleet commanders should not have cleared the towing of the submarine after a bad weather forecast; the tugboat had moved faster than allowed by official instructions; the crew were not evacuated, even after a raging storm ripped off some of the pontoons and the submarine began to tilt. The submarine sank 90 minutes after senior fleet commanders were informed about the accident.

The submarine, whose two nuclear reactors were shut down in 1989, is lying at a depth of 238 meters in the Barents Sea. It has no weapons aboard, officials said. Tests on fish from the Barents Sea have shown no sign of increased radioactivity since the sinking of the submarine, Norway's atomic safety authority has said.

The latest accident came three years after Russia's worst peacetime naval disaster, when all 118 crew of the nuclear submarine Kursk died when it sank in the same sea on 12 August 2000. The Russian navy raised the Kursk from the seabed in an unprecedented operation in 2001.

The whole event indicates that the evolution was inadequately planned and there existed a negligent regard for personnel safety and equipment integrity. The firing of those responsible is more than justified.