Nuclear submarine Kursk is raised

The raising of the Kursk nuclear submarine has been completed. A Dutch consortium says it has taken more than 12 hours to lift the vessel to the surface of the Barents Sea.

It will now be put in clamps under the Giant 4 barge and towed to a dry dock near the Russian port of Murmansk.

Vice Admiral Mikhail Motsak, the Russian naval commander overseeing the recovery operation, says the Kursk should arrive in harbour at Roslyakovo, near Murmansk, on Wednesday provided the weather stays calm, allowing the salvage team to take the shortest route possible.

"We know the weather forecast and will go directly to the Kola Bay," Motsak said.

If the seas get rough, the barge may take a longer journey, allowing it to wait out a storm near the coast.

Weather shows a trend of worsening on Monday evening, with snow flurries covering Murmansk.

The lifting went on exceptionally smoothly and trouble-free in the background of repeated technical problems and delays throughout the preceding three-month preparatory work.

Experts feared it would be difficult to overcome the force of the sediment on the sea bottom, but that posed no difficulty.

Larissa van Seumeren, a spokeswoman for Mammoet-Smit, said the submarine was less deeply embedded in the sea bed than believed.

"We started to pull and there was almost no suction," she said. "It was lifted up easily."