Conditions on board Russian naval vessels and particularly on submarines are extremely uncomfortable at the best of times. The ships, crewed mainly by young conscripts under a professional officer corps, have suffered due to the country's economic difficulties. Two senior officers who informed western sources of the dangers caused by the dilapidation of nuclear powered submarines have been charged with high treason.
In 1992 I was a member of the first group of foreign journalists to visit the closed city of Sevastopol, home base of the Black Sea fleet. Sailors on the submarines I visited were housed in cramped conditions. Movement between one section of the vessel to another was achieved by crawling through tunnel-like spaces with barely enough room to accommodate one person. Despite being in the safety of port one got a strong feeling of the horrific atmosphere that could prevail in the event of an accident at sea.
Some of the conscripts I spoke to came from the steppes of central and eastern Russia. They spoke of having seen the sea for the first time in their lives upon arrival at the base for training. To add to the lack of comfort the submarines and even the hospital ship where I was billeted due to a water shortage at the local hotel, hosted other forms of life. The tarakan, the indestructible Russian cockroach, was present in numbers and travelled the seas with what was once a proud and mighty navy.
Although the last fatal accident involving a Soviet submarine took place in 1989, when the nuclear-powered Komsomolets went down more than 200 miles off the Norwegian coast with the loss of 42 lives, there has been considerable concern about the state of Russia's submarine fleet since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.
With internal conflict continuing in the Northern Caucasus more emphasis has been placed on equipment used by the army and the air force than on the maintenance of naval resources.
The Kursk, constructed in 1994, is the only nuclear submarine built in Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The current state of Russia's nuclear fleet is a matter of controversy. The FSB, one of the KGB's successor agencies, has challenged a not guilty verdict on Capt Alexander Nikitin who made the Norwegian agency Bellona aware of environmental risks from nuclear reactors in submarines of the Northern Fleet.
On the other side of the vast country Capt Grigory Pasko was brought to trial on charges of high treason relating to articles written for Japanese publications on the state of vessels in the Pacific Fleet at Vladivostok.