Seventeen fishermen are missing and feared dead on Monday after a Russian trawler capsized during a storm and sank in the icy waters of the Barents Sea. Officials said two people were rescued by a passing ship, but hopes were quickly fading that more survivors could be found during a snowstorm in Arctic waters.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday expressed “deep condolences” to the victims’ families and offered “words of support” to the survivors.
“It was with regret that I heard about the tragedy,” Putin said in a statement released by the Kremlin.
Speaking at a government meeting earlier in the day, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin charged the authorities with providing the necessary assistance to the victims’ relatives.
“A tragedy happened today in the Barents Sea,” said Mishustin. “People died,” he added, without giving further details.
Alexander Kokorin / AP
Officials said a search and rescue operation was underway, but that bad weather conditions complicated the task.
“There is a strong snowstorm, the waves reach four meters high and temperatures are around 20-25 degrees Celsius below zero,” Alexei Barinov, a spokesman for the emergency ministry in the northwest region of Murmansk.
“We hope for a New Year miracle,” he added.
However, a source familiar with the details of the search efforts told AFP that there was little hope of finding survivors.
“A person cannot last more than 15 minutes in these conditions,” said the source.
The privately owned boat, called Onega, sank near the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Barents Sea around 6:20 am (3:30 am GMT), said Ruslan Nazarov, head of the Murmansk branch of the emergency ministry.
Ten minutes later, a passing ship rescued two fishermen, Nazarov told reporters.
Officials believe the Russian-flagged ship, which has been in operation since 1979, capsized after the ice buildup tipped it over.
The disaster happened when the crew was pulling a net with the catch, said the spokesman for the shipping and river transport agency Rosmorrechflot, Alexei Kravchenko.
“The ship lost its balance and capsized instantly,” he told AFP.
Three ships and an Il-38 maritime patrol plane were dispatched to the scene, officials said.
Kravchenko said that no bodies have been found so far, although the two survivors have seen a crew member die in front of them.
Marine accidents are quite common in Russia.
In April 2015, a Russian trawler was wrecked in the Okhotsk Sea, near Kamchatka. Of the 132 people on board the Dalniy Vostok, only 63 were rescued.
In December 2011, a drilling rig overturned and sank on Sakhalin Island during a storm. More than 50 people died or disappeared.