Representatives of the company's Tananger branch signed the contract Monday with the Rubin military design bureau, which designed the Kursk. Igor Spassky, the head of Rubin, told a news conference in St. Petersburg that the retrieval work would begin about Oct. 18. He said it would be impossible to bring back all the remains, since most of the compartments in the shattered submarine were destroyed in the Aug. 12 disaster. That deal fell through. Authorities still have not determined what caused the explosions and sinking of the Kursk, which went down during military exercises.
Russian officials say the most likely scenario was a collision with a foreign submarine.
But the United States, which has acknowledged that its submarines were monitoring the military exercises, has denied that. American officials say the Kursk may have gone down after a torpedo misfire. In The Moment Computing.