THE wreck of the Kursk was heading for port yesterday after a successful salvage operation that lifted the nuclear submarine from wintry Arctic waters, boosting Russian national morale and reinforcing President Putin’s popularity.

        “The hardest job has been done,” a jubilant Ilya Klebanov, the Deputy Prime Minister, said after leaving the northern port of Murmansk, having overseen the lift. He said that there was no danger from the nuclear reactors on board the craft. Bad weather and technical complications have dogged the three-month operation, scheduled for completion on September 15.

        Salvage teams finally lifted the Kursk from 370ft below the surface on Monday using 26 giant 22-tonne steel cables. The 450ft submarine, now fitted snugly under a barge, the Giant-4, is being towed to a dry dock inside the Arctic Circle. A support ship, the Mayo, will stay at sea until today to clear up equipment used to winch up the boat.

        By the end of the week, the Kursk will be examined and emptied of weapons and bodies before being destroyed. “We worked as a single team in which a climate of trust prevailed,” Jacob Hogedorp, the Dutch captain of the Mayo, said of his Russian colleagues.

        Few would have predicted this outcome a year ago. When the Kursk exploded and sank on August 12, 2000, killing all 118 men on board, the unexplained tragedy awakened all Russia’s post-Soviet fears of decline and humiliation. The weakness and secretiveness of the Armed Forces was on display; the President’s failure to break his holiday and go to Murmansk to handle his first emergency as ruler was condemned.

        The outcry was a lesson he took to heart. His promise made then to raise the Kursk from the ocean bed and recover the bodies for relatives to bury was an important first step in a battle to regain his people’s trust. Russia is more optimistic than a year ago. Its economy is buoyant and being reformed.

        Presidential efforts are even overcoming local shortages — including the seasonal one of winter heating fuel — in parts of the country long neglected. While many Russians are bewildered by the pace of international change since September 11, and anxious about the possibility of more war in and around Afghanistan, they are far from unenthusiastic about Mr Putin’s diplomatic breakthroughs to the West. After dipping 10 per cent over the Kursk fiasco, the President’s popularity is steady again at more than 70 per cent. Yet the tears of relief shed by salvage workers on Monday bore witness not only to the tensions of the lifting operation, but also of the bigger project of restoring Russian self-esteem.

        It had seemed all but impossible that the operation could succeed. Two unexplained explosions had ripped apart the submarine’s nose, packed with weaponry, leaving a gaping hole. On board were two nuclear reactors and about two dozen cruise missiles. Other submarines had been lifted in the past, but none as large as the 18,000-tonne Kursk.

        Five nuclear submarines, two American and three Russian, remain buried at depths of up to 16,000ft because raising them was judged too expensive. Russia spoke not only of the importance of recovering bodies, but of the need to avoid environmental damage from the boat’s nuclear reactors, because of the relatively shallow waters.

        About £44.5 million was spent on the operation, organised by its Northern Fleet and the Dutch contractors Smit International and Mammoet. Relatives of the dead submariners must wait before being allowed to identify or bury any bodies, Colonel Andrei Mayorov, of the Military Prosecutor’s Office, said.

        First military investigators, forensic medics and explosives experts will inspect, investigate and remove weapons. In today’s more understanding atmosphere, this last delay is one that the families may be better able to accept.

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