President Vladimir Putin initially continued his vacation at a seaside resort in Sochi[1] and authorised the Russian Navy to accept British and Norwegian assistance only after five days had passed.

[22]: 72  The Russian Navy had previously operated two India-class submarines, each of which carried a pair of Poseidon-class DSRVs that could reach a depth of 693 m (2,270 ft), but due to a lack of funds, the vessels had been held since 1994 in a Saint Petersburg yard for pending repairs.

"[22]: 87 On the afternoon of the explosion, before the Kremlin had been informed of the submarine's sinking, U.S. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and Defense Secretary William Cohen were told that Kursk had sunk.

[20]: 32 Bad weather, 3.7 m (12 ft) waves, strong undersea currents, and limited visibility impaired the rescue crews' ability to conduct operations on Tuesday and Wednesday.

[32] On Thursday at 12:00, Popov reported to the general staff of the Navy that no explosion had occurred on the Kursk, that the sub was intact on the seafloor, and that an "external influence" might have caused a leak between the first and second compartments.

[35] Fragments of both the outer and inner hulls were found nearby, including a piece of Kursk's nose weighing 5 t (5.5 short tons), indicating a large explosion in the forward torpedo room.

[16] On 21 August, after the Norwegian divers confirmed that no one was alive in the ninth compartment, Russian Northern Fleet Chief of Staff Mikhail Motsak announced to the public that the Kursk was flooded and that all of its crewmembers had died.

On 29 or 30 August 2000, an official government commission tasked with investigating the disaster announced that the likely cause of the sinking was a "strong 'dynamic external impact' corresponding with the 'first event'", probably a collision with a foreign submarine or a large surface ship, or striking a World War II mine.

Twenty-four hours after the submarine's disappearance, as Russian naval officials made bleak calculations about the chances of the 118 men on board, Putin was filmed enjoying himself, shirtsleeves rolled up, hosting a barbecue at his holiday villa on the Black Sea.

[63] Russians and observers in the West were shocked by the incident and feared that the public sedation of a crew member's mother meant that the former Soviet Union was returning to Cold War-era methods of silencing dissent.

The government published a four-page summary in Rossiyskaya Gazeta that revealed "stunning breaches of discipline, shoddy, obsolete and poorly maintained equipment",[20][70] and "negligence, incompetence, and mismanagement".

Although the sub was at periscope depth with its radio antennas extended, no one in the command post sent a distress signal or pressed a single button that would initiate an emergency ballast-tank blow and bring the submarine to the surface.

In addition to the crew in those compartments, five officers from 7th SSGN Division Headquarters and two design engineers were on board to observe the performance of a new battery in the USET-80 torpedo, set to be launched second.

[71] According to an article that briefly appeared on Thursday 17 August 2000 on the website of the official newspaper of the Russian Defence Ministry, Krasnaya Zvezda, Kursk had been refitted in 1998—four years after it was commissioned—to carry torpedoes fuelled using the cheap HTP.

[16] While some reports claimed that the buoy had repeatedly malfunctioned and been welded in place,[14] investigators learned that Kursk had been deployed to the Mediterranean during the summer of 1999 to monitor the U.S. fleet responding to the Kosovo War.

[20]: 34 While the official government commission blamed the explosion on a faulty weld in the practice torpedo, Vice Admiral Valery Ryazantsev cited inadequate training, poor maintenance, and incomplete inspections that caused the crew to mishandle the weapon.

Ryazantsev believed that due to their inexperience and lack of training, compounded by incomplete inspections and oversight, and because Kursk's crew followed faulty instructions when loading the practice torpedo, they set off a chain of events that led to the explosion.

[73] The Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid published a report in June 2001 that senior officers in the Russian Navy had engaged in an elaborate deception to cover the actual cause of the disaster.

[29] Mainstream publications like Der Spiegel, Berliner Zeitung, and the Sunday Times claimed to possess documentation proving that the submarine was struck by a missile fired by Pyotr Velikiy.

[7] Other theories included Chechen espionage, human error, sabotage,[7] and that Kursk was testing a new top-secret torpedo, Shkval (Squall), capable of speeds in excess of 200 kn (370 km/h).

To raise the remainder of the boat, the salvage team planned an extremely complex operation that required them to design and build custom lifting equipment and employ new technologies.

They wrote custom software that would automatically compensate for the effects of wave motion due to the rough Barents Sea, which could sever the cables suspending the sub beneath the barge.

The giant cable reels fed 26 huge hydraulic strand jacks, each mounted on a computer-controlled, pressurised pneumatic heave compensator powered by nitrogen gas that automatically adjusted for sea waves.

The team then used the four guide cables to lower a custom-made giant gripper, similar to a toggle bolt, which were custom designed to fit each hole, and the divers manoeuvred them through the guidance ring.

[104] Vice Admiral Vladislav Ilyin, first deputy chief of the Russian Navy's staff and head of the Kursk Naval Incident Cell, concluded that the survivors had lived up to three days.

[5] Working from a database of personal identification details, including the crew members' features, dental X-rays, birth marks, and tattoos, the doctors examined the bodies as they were brought to the laboratory.

[106] Forensic examination of two of the reactor control room casualties found in compartment four showed extensive skeletal injuries, which indicated that they had sustained an explosive force over 50 g. These shocks would have immediately incapacitated or killed the operators.

[9] Kursk's participation in the exercise had been intended to demonstrate Russia's place as an important player on the international stage, but the country's inept handling of the crisis instead exposed its weak political decision-making ability and the decline of its military.

[114] President Putin signed a decree awarding the Order of Courage to the entire crew, and the title Hero of the Russian Federation to the submarine's captain, Gennady Lyachin.

[6] On 31 July 2012, divers representing the relatives of Kursk's crew and the Northern Fleet command placed a 2 m (6 ft 7 in)-tall Orthodox Cross on the floor of the Barents Sea at the site of the disaster.