AMSTERDAM: NATO chief Mark Rutte mocked Russia on Monday over the “limping” condition of one of its submarines as Russian authorities denied it had been forced to surface because of technical problems.
Russia’s Black Sea Fleet said the diesel-powered submarine Novorossiysk had surfaced off France to comply with navigation rules in the English Channel, and rejected reports it had suffered a serious malfunction.
But Dutch authorities said at the weekend that the submarine was under tow in the North Sea. And Rutte, in a speech in Slovenia, said the vessel was “broken.”
“Now, in effect, there is hardly any Russian naval presence in the Mediterranean left. There’s a lone and broken Russian submarine limping home from patrol,” he said.
“What a change from the 1984 Tom Clancy novel ‘The Hunt for Red October’. Today, it seems more like the hunt for the nearest mechanic.”
