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DEPTHS OF DESPAIR When the Kursk, a billion-dollar Russian submarine, exploded last summer, most of its crew died in minutes. The 23 left alive spent the following days at the bottom of the icy sea waiting to be saved. Ramsey Flynn tells the stories of the entombed sailors, their anxious families and the dithering officials who left the men to die
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The Russians are about to recover their first dead sailor. It's a
stormy pre-dawn on the Barents Sea as a metal basket rises up from
the Arctic depths and is swung by a crane to the platform of a giant
oil exploration vessel. Workers bracing themselves against the 40-
knot gale separate the crane's cables from the dripping basket.
"Viktor!" shouts a worker over the screaming wind, summoning his
colleague to help him with the door of the examining room.
"Otkrivail" - "Open up!"
Inside,...
