Great Britain to give Russia loan to save Russian submarines from sinking

British government granted Russia $21.5 million as a loan to scrap two atomic submarines.
Currently British Minister for Industry and Trade Nigel Griffits is supervising the work on scrapping the submarines. He said the two subs having tonnage of 12,000 had already started to be scrapped. 
 
"We are actively cooperating with our partners from the G-8 countries to get rid of the threats inherited from the Cold War”, the Minister said.
 
The joint Russian-British product is financed in the framework of the program “Global Partnership of the G-8 Countries”. The project scheduled scrapping of two multifunctional atomic submarines which are no longer in Russian Navy. The work on the project was started in December 2003 and is to be completed in the fall of 2004.

The submarines undergo scrapping at Zvezdochka (Little Star) enterprise. Nigel Griffits visited Zvezdochka February 24.

On October 20, 2003 Head of Ecological Safety Service of Defense Ministry Lieutenant-General Aleftin Yunak said that Great Britain would borrow Russia 5.5 million dollars to save the old submarines from sinking, Polit.ru reported. 
 
During the last big exercise of Russian Northern Fleet some unsolved problems of Russian submarine fleet were revealed, REGNUM information agency reports. 
 
In May 2003 Russia, Belgium, Great Britain, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the USA and EU signed the treaty on taking measures on scrapping the atomic vessels with expired term of exploitation. On September 28 the State Duma ratified the treaty on nuclear-ecological program in Russia.
 
 Source: Internet media