A detailed special report. A collection of articles.

With a public confession tonight by President Vladimir V. Putin that he feels "responsibility and guilt" for the loss of the nuclear submarine Kursk, Russia's political evolution seems to be taking a new kind of post-Soviet turn.

Speaking in somber tones and at times struggling for words, Russia's defense minister, Marshal Igor D. Sergeyev, offered a defense tonight of the military's failure to rescue the crew of the stricken nuclear submarine Kursk.

President Vladimir V. Putin promised the grieving families of the 118-member crew of the destroyed nuclear submarine Kursk tonight that the government would pay each family the equivalent of an officer's salary for 10 years to compensate them for their loss,