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Robots sent to rescue crew

US and British planes carrying robotic undersea vehicles landed in Russia's far east yesterday to help rescue seven sailors trapped in a mini-submarine deep in the Pacific.

Authorities plan to use the unmanned submersibles, known as Super Scorpios, to investigate the accident site and possibly cut the sub loose from entanglements that have held it some 190m below the surface since Thursday.

Rescuers made contact with the crew last night and said their condition was "satisfactory," despite temperatures as low as 5oC, Russian Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Viktor Fyodorov said.

Russia's plea for international assistance underlined the deficiencies of its once-mighty navy and strongly contrasted with the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk five years ago, when authorities held off asking for help until hope was nearly exhausted. All 118 crew died in that accident.

But even with Moscow's quick call for help, rescue workers were racing to free the men before their oxygen supply ran out.

Navy officials have given various estimates of the air supply. Some say it could last into tomorrow. Rear Admiral Vladimir Pepelyayev, deputy head of the navy's general staff, said yesterday that the air would likely last to the end of the day and possibly through today.

"I think it should be enough to last to the end of the [rescue] operation," he said.

Navy spokesman Captain Igor Dygalo said rescue efforts involving the US and British equipment could begin around 8pm Moscow time, Russian news agencies reported. But by early afternoon, the vehicles had not been loaded onto ships in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on the rain-soaked Kamchatka peninsula.

Georgy Romanovich, spokesman for the rescue operation headquarters, said it would take five hours for a ship carrying the equipment to reach the site in Beryozovaya Bay, about 75km south of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the capital of the peninsula region north of Japan and west of Alaska's Aleutian Islands.

The vessel, which had been participating in a combat training exercise, got caught on an underwater antenna assembly that is part of Russia's coastal monitoring system.

Officials have said the sub's propeller initially became ensnared in a fishing net.

The Interfax news agency quoted Fyodorov as saying crews planned to try to blow up the anchoring system in an effort to free the vessel, but it was unclear how that would be done.

Apparently lacking rescue vehicles capable of operating at the depth where the sub is stranded, the cash-strapped Russian navy's rescue efforts have focused on trying to grab and drag the sub with a trawling apparatus.

Dygalo earlier said that rescuers had managed to move the sub about 60m toward shore by hooking onto a part of the underwater antenna on which the sub was caught, but reports said the hauling system then became unattached.

"We won't try to drag it any-more. We will try to lift the whole system, rip it off and bring it to the surface," Fyodorov said on NTV television.

The events and the array of confusing and contradictory statements darkly echoed the sinking of the Kursk. That disaster shocked Russians and demonstrated that the once-mighty navy had deteriorated as funding dried up following the 1991 Soviet collapse.

The new crisis indicated that promises by Russian President Vladimir Putin to improve the navy's equipment have had little effect. Putin was criticized for his slow response to the Kursk crisis and reluctance to accept foreign help. By midday yesterday, Putin had made no public comment.
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