The Economist (via JRL) has some good commentary on the tale of the rescued "Priz" minisub. Like their fellow Brits at the FT last week, they get right to the point on the weakness of the Russian navy. The last paragraph of the Economist piece also echoes - in a rather more withering fashion - the point made in last week's Moscow Times editorial about Putin's leadership deficiencies:

The Economist, August 13-19, 2005
The Russian navy [subscription required]
Potemkin fleet: The good news, and the less good news, from Russia's submarine drama

[...] The men survived because the Russians accepted foreign help at a moment when it could still make a difference. Five years ago they waited until there was no hope, and also tried to blame a non-existent foreign craft for hitting the Kursk. The psychological cost to Russia's top brass of last week's humility was considerable. But it is too soon to conclude that this reflects a new priority for human life over pride and secrecy. [...]

The biggest unchanged thing is the Russian navy itself. It plans to buy some of the remote-controlled gadgets used by the British rescuers. But, as Pavel Baev, a military analyst, says, the navy is in such poor shape that accidents of this sort are “doomed to happen again and again”. Between the Kursk and this week, another submarine sank in 2003, with nine lives lost. Last month, the flagship of a naval review in St Petersburg was damaged during a rehearsal.

The problem is that, even as the navy has shrunk from its Soviet size, the admirals still like to pretend that they can fight on the high seas, rather than using their limited means to prepare for more plausible tasks such as preventing poaching, or to care for and train their sailors. Mark Galeotti, of Britain's Keele University, says the result is a Potemkin navy, which can “just about pass muster so long as nobody shoots at it.”

Another similarity with the Kursk was the invisibility throughout the crisis of Vladimir Putin, Russia's president. For all his posturing and would-be authoritarianism, avoidance of responsibility is still an imperative for Mr Putin. Weakness and neurosis beneath a semblance of
power: the president and his navy have much in common.