Unknown vandals have dishonoured the memorial by stealing the letters that formed the inscription “To the submarines who died in peace-time”, RIA Novosti reports. The memorial was opened this summer by the church “Our Saviour on the Water” in Murmansk.
The memorial is mainly composed of the sail (tower) from the nuclear powered submarine “Kursk” which sank with 118 sailors in the Barents Sea in August 2000. After the submarine had been raised from the bottom of the sea and scrapped, the sail from the vessel was handed over to the local authorities in Murmansk. Because of lack of funding, no memorial was raised.
In March 2009, Russian journalists found the sail rusting at a scrap metal ground in Murmansk. This discovery created much indignation amongst Russians and Murmansk Oblast Governor Dmitry Dmitriyenko took personal responsibility for raising of a monument over the sailors on “Kursk, as BarentsObserver reported.
