Monument to seamen who perished in sunken Kursk submarine unveiled in Moscow

A monument to crewmen of the sunken Kursk nuclear submarine was unveiled Monday in Moscow at the building of the Armed Forces Museum.

The memory of the Northern Fleet submariners, who died two years ago, was honoured by members of the president's administration, the Russian Government, the Defense Ministry, the Moscow administration and the crewmen's relatives.

"The memory of the perished comrades is the cause of our consciousness and our honor," Andrei Shepelenko, commander of a nuclear submarine of the 7th division of the Northern Fleet, said. "It is a monument of grief, the little that we can do for them," he added. The Kursk submarine had been part of the 7th division.

The monument is a figure of a sailor towering over a destroyed submarine. The submariner stands there, his cloak fluttering against the background of park greenery and a bright blue sky, as a symbol of unbending will in the face of imminent death.

The monument has been made by retired Captain, First Rank, Lev Kerbel, a well-known sculptor, who also is Vice-President of the Russian Academy of Arts, and Igor Voznesensky, chief architect of Moscow.