The incident was the worst loss of life on a Russian submarine since the 2008 K-152 "Nerpa" accident which killed 20 men. The commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy Nikolai Yevmenov launched an investigation into the cause of the fire, and President Vladimir Putin sent Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu to monitor the investigation and report on the incident. On 2 July, Shoygu reported on the fire to Putin, the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armed Forces, at a meeting in the Kremlin. Initially, some media outlets complained that the Russian Government was attempting to cover up the accident, drawing parallels to the submarine "Kursk" disaster; some went as far as comparing the event to the Chernobyl disaster, even though the incident was reported to the public one day after it took place.