PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY (Russia), Aug 7: Seven exhausted Russian sailors returned to dry land on Sunday after a dramatic operation by a British undersea robot freed their mini-submarine three days after it became trapped on the Pacific Ocean floor.

The rescue, some 75 hours after the Priz AS-28 mini-sub became snagged at the seabed 190 meters underwater during military exercises, was completed with just hours of oxygen supplies left for the stranded crew.

“We believed the whole time that we would be saved,” the AS-28’s captain, Vyacheslav Milashevsky, told ITAR-TASS news agency after reaching Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the regional capital, by boat.

The men, wearing naval uniforms, looked drained, but happy as they stepped onto dry land. There was no disguising the joy in Russia that they had not shared the fate of the 118 sailors on the sunken nuclear submarine Kursk five years ago.

“I cried from happiness and danced,” Milashevsky’s wife Yelena said on state-run television. The sailors were pronounced in good health and taken to hospital for further check-ups.

The key to the submariners’ rescue from the seabed roughly 70 kilometres from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, was the arrival of a British navy team with a sophisticated Scorpio underwater robot.

Using powerful cutters, the Scorpio slashed through the cables of a coastal defence antenna and a fishing net in which the AS-28 had become trapped. In six hours, the submarine was able to surface.

Its crew, who had spent the last days mostly in darkness and wearing thermal suits against the cold, opened the hatch themselves and emerged into the air and light.

Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov, who arrived just as the British team was going to work, was shown on national television cheering from a ship at the scene. The sudden success of British rescue experts was in marked contrast to two days of futile efforts by Russian ships to haul up both the mini-sub and the cables in which it was entangled.

“The rescue operation has had a happy ending. I thank everyone, including of course the British rescuers,” Pacific fleet commander Admiral Viktor Fyodorov said.

British naval Commander Jonty Powis said the mission was a close shave, since the stranded submariners had just 10 to 12 hours before oxygen supplies ran out.

“We were conscious that the crew were running out of oxygen and that we could not afford any great delays in cutting them free,” Commander Powis said. “This was a fairly routine procedure, but the fact that we were dealing with people’s lives created extra difficulties.”

President Vladimir Putin, who was widely criticized five years ago for failing to take command over the Kursk disaster, ordered an official inquiry on Sunday and issued a statement expressing thanks to all the rescuers. However, he had yet to make any direct public reaction.

Confusion in official statements over the cause of the accident and widely-varying accounts of how much air the crew had left also echoed the chaotic official response to the sinking of the Kursk.

However, Moscow’s prompt appeal for international help could not have been more different. —AFP