Russian submarine crew rescued

Seven Russians trapped for three days deep in the Pacific with dwindling oxygen were saved with British help yesterday when rescuers cut their mini-submarine free of tangled cables.

"Today was a very happy event. The intensive work to free our submarine at a depth of 200 metres brought results... Our comrades in the crew opened the hatch themselves," said Admiral Viktor Fyodorov, commander of Russia's Pacific Fleet.

"They behaved valiantly over these 76 hours under water, we heard no complaints, all we heard was that they were fine... It is worth living for these moments."

The seven submariners walked steadily off their rescue ship down a gangway to a waiting crowd in the port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, where many people had feared air supplies would fail before the men could be rescued.

Lieutenant Vyacheslav Milashevsky led the crew down the gangway after standing straight-backed to salute the crowd.

"Yes, of course," he said, when asked if he had always believed he would be saved. The crew then boarded a minibus to go to hospital for medical checks.

The rescue of the AS-28, itself a rescue vehicle, was made possible by a British Scorpio underwater robot flown out to the scene, which severed the cables tangled around it.

Underwater footage aired on Russian television showed pieces of net wrapped tightly around the red-and-white-striped submarine's propeller, and the Scorpio pulling them away.

US divers also helped in the rescue, while Japanese ships were still steaming to the scene.

Officers had said they might only have yesterday left to rescue the men stuck on board the AS-28, which was snarled up in fishing nets and the antenna of an underwater listening station, because of their limited air supply.

"We were conscious that the crew were running out of oxygen and that we could not afford any great delays in cutting them free," said the British Navy's Commander Jonty Powis, a specialist on submarine rescue who monitored the operation.

"We understand that the sailors are safe and well, and they had about 10 to 12 hours left in oxygen supply."

The crisis, which began on Thursday but only came to light the following day, stirred up memories of a botched attempt to save a Russian submarine five years ago.

The nuclear-powered Kursk sank in the Barents Sea in August 2000 after two huge underwater explosions and all 118 crew perished in a drama that traumatised Russia.