Final countdown to Kursk operation

The Kursk salvage plan is dangerous and contentious

With the operation to salvage the Russian Kursk submarine set to begin within days, BBC Moscow correspondent Jacky Rowland visits the port of Murmansk - the centre of the controversial operation.

Over the coming months the Russian authorities are going to try to bring the Kursk submarine up from the bottom of the Barents Sea, a year after it sank during military manoeuvres, killing all 118 crew members.

It is an operation some people do not think is possible.

Scale models and computer simulations have been used in preparation

As the operation enters its final stages of preparation, computer simulations have been prepared to show how a Dutch heavy lifting company called Mammoet plans to dislodge the Kursk from the seabed and raise it through 100m of water.

Divers will need to drill holes in the hull and attach thick cables. The wreck will then be winched up by a big barge directly overhead - or at least that is the plan.

International operation

An international team including British divers will be involved in the operation. We phoned their boss, Geir Auna, at his office in Norway.

I'm very confident that these divers will perform very well under these conditions

Divers' boss
Geir Auna

"They have never participated in the salvage of a submarine before of course," said boss Geir Auna.

"But the complexity of the work here is nothing more extreme than they have been used to, so I'm very confident that these divers will perform very well under these conditions with the sort of work they're faced with."

Russian divers have been practising for their part in the operation. Some of these men are already familiar with the Kursk, having taken part in the failed rescue mission last August.

Nobody knows where torpedoes and other ammunition inside the submarine are

Environmentalist Sergei Filipov

But there will be no divers in the sea for the most dangerous task.

The team will use robots to cut off the front section of the sub, where the accident happened, and leave it on the seabed.

I spoke to a local environmentalist, Sergei Filipov, here on the dockside at Murmansk. He says there are so many variables that another disaster is waiting to happen.

"The submarine during this operation of lifting can just break into two parts," he says. "So it can happen.

Huge cables will be attached to 26 points on the hull

"Nobody knows where torpedoes and other ammunition inside the submarine are for the time being and during this operation of drilling, of cutting, anybody can just touch off some of them and something could happen, another explosion or something like it."

But the Russian authorities are determined to push ahead, despite the risks.

It is a matter of personal prestige for President Vladimir Putin. At the time of the accident he promised to raise the submarine and retrieve the bodies of its crew.

Putin's PR disaster

A Russian journalist, Alexei Germanovich, was with the president at a holiday resort when the submarine went down. He says Mr Putin is trying to make up now for his public relations disaster last year.

"In Russia, this accident was so dramatic because it was a break of all the hopes in military strength, in government power and very much lack of faith in the newly-elected president, who didn't do anything while the submarine sank.

Environmentalists fear that moving the Kursk could detonate its weapons

"This was a very big dissonance - him staying there on the warm sea while the people in the cold sea couldn't save the other soldiers."

Television broadcasts at the time showed the loss of the submarine and its crew as a national tragedy. It was also a personal tragedy for the families of the men who died.

But even if the authorities get the Kursk to shore, there is no guarantee that we will ever find out how the accident really happened.

Sceptics here in Russia say the government will cover up any findings that could be an embarrassment - the testing of a new missile, for example, which went wrong.

After a year of pain and uncertainty for the families, the secret of the Kursk could remain buried at the bottom of the sea.