Relief all round: The jubilant crew now in hospital ashore
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The seven Russian sailors trapped in their submersible on the Pacific seabed at the weekend say they suffered from thirst, hunger and cold.
The men - rescued by a UK robot craft on Sunday after being stuck for 76 hours - wrote farewell messages as their air supply dwindled.
They are reported to be in satisfactory condition, recovering in hospital.
Their naval mini-sub snagged on nets and antenna cables off the Kamchatka peninsula at a depth of 190m (620ft).
During their ordeal, the crew had just a few gulps of water a day to drink and a few biscuits to eat.
They poured some of their scant water over the oxygen regeneration canisters so that they had air to breathe, Russian television reported.
"We simply didn't have enough water. We were short of oxygen too. Not badly, but we could feel in our bodies that we weren't getting enough," said Warrant Officer Alexander Uybin.
UK help
Russia's President Vladimir Putin has ordered an investigation into how the Priz AS-28 craft got stuck.
When it resurfaced on Sunday, the men were able to climb out unaided.
The submersible was snagged in vast fishing nets and in a network of underwater antennae forming part of a military coastal surveillance system, Russian officials said.
The network was described as a two-tier antennae lattice covering an area of 750 sq m and held in place by 60-ton anchors.
The British Scorpio craft involved in the rescue was flown to Kamchatka and taken out to sea on a Russian vessel.
Russian efforts to rescue the sub's crew, which included looping a cable onto the vessel to drag it to higher waters, had failed earlier.
Congratulating the UK team, Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov presented them with watches and also promised awards for the rescued crew. He had witnessed the rescue operation off Kamchatka.
The mini-sub's commander Vyacheslav Milashevsky saluted as he came ashore in Patrovpavlovsk-Kamchatsky to a reception of relatives, sailors and local residents.
His wife Yelena spoke of her relief on hearing of his safe return.
"I danced. I was glad, I cried and I danced for joy," she told Russian Channel One TV.
Navy under scrutiny
Russian defence ministry sources quoted by the daily Kommersant on Monday say the commander of the Russian navy, Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov, will be sent into retirement soon.
Netting and cables got wrapped around the mini-sub's propeller
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He had also seen his navy embarrassed on 30 July by the near sinking of a flagship vessel during an exercise in St Petersburg on the eve of Russian Navy Day.
The BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Moscow says that questions are now being asked, including:
- why Russia still has no modern deep-sea rescue equipment, five years after the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine in which 118 sailors perished
- why information on this accident from the navy was again late in coming and then deeply contradictory
The managing director of a British firm involved in the rescue, Rumic, told the BBC the operation had taken several hours.
"There were a lot of fishing nets which we had to cut away, but there were no steel cables, although some of it did look like steel. Initial reports could have suggested there were steel rather than nylon nets," Roger Chapman told the BBC.
According to the commander of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Viktor Fyodorov, fishermen had violated the navy's rules in the bay, abandoning nets which had got caught on the underwater surveillance system.
They had not informed the navy about it, he said.
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MINI-SUB RESCUE
1) 2120 GMT: A Russian cable-laying ship arrives at the scene and begins to lower the Scorpio robot craft
2) 2300 GMT: Scorpio begins to cut the cables and netting trapping the Russian mini-sub
3) 0200 GMT: After repairs to its cutting tool, Scorpio resumes work
4) 0357 GMT: Last obstructions are cut and mini-sub surfaces quickly on its own
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I cried and danced for joy
