Russia said to mothball nuclear subs
MOSCOW -- A top admiral alleged the chief of Russia's navy has decided to mothball its most powerful nuclear submarines after refusing to modernize their missiles. The navy denied it yesterday and accused the admiral of divulging state secrets.
Admiral Gennady Suchkov, the head of the Northern Fleet, said that Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov had ordered the navy to decommission the Typhoon-class submarines, depriving Russia of an important component of its strategic nuclear arsenal.
"Nuclear weaponry is the only thing that brings respect to our nation," he said in an interview published yesterday in the liberal newspaper, Novaya Gazeta.
With a displacement of about 27,500 tons, the Typhoon-class submarines are the world's largest. Each is equipped to carry 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Suchkov said in separate comments to the Interfax-Military News Agency that the Northern Fleet has three Typhoon-class submarines -- the Arkhangelsk, the Severstal, and the Dmitry Donskoi. He said his pleas for modernizing the missiles had fallen on deaf ears, and that only the Severstal carries 10 missiles, while the other two are unarmed.
Suchkov said the navy had refused to earmark about $1.1 million to upgrade the submarines' missiles.
Captain Igor Dygalo, a navy spokesman, insisted yesterday that there are no plans to scrap the Typhoon-class submarines.
"They will remain on duty fulfilling their tasks," Dygalo said. He also assailed Suchkov for unveiling what he said was confidential information about the submarines' weapons.
But Suchkov said he had written a letter to President Vladimir Putin to inform him of Kuroyedov's plan to mothball the vessels.
The outspoken Suchkov has long been on a collision course with Kuroyedov, the navy chief. Putin suspended Suchkov as the Northern Fleet chief after the August sinking of a decommissioned nuclear submarine, and a military court convicted him last week of negligence that led to the death of nine of the submarine's 10 crew. He was given a four-year suspended prison sentence.
