The nightmare element to this, wich somehow seesm to make it worse than most sea and air disasters, is the idea of it being dragged out into slopw motion. Trapped and doomed. As someone said up the thread, more like a mining disaster like the Springhill than anything else.

I can't believe that the US or the British governments would behave any better in this sort of situation when it came to asking help. That doesn't in any way excuse Putin and his cronies, and if I was a Russian I'd want his scalp. But note, he's the darling of the British and American governments, regardless of Chechyna or whatever. "We can do business with him."

For all those years we were told how terrible and all powerful these communist Russians were. Now the very same people who used to tell us that are saying how weak and incompetent they are now they've switched to capitalism.

If you believed them it's not much of a advert for capitalism. In fact I imagine the truth is somewhere in between, and the Russians have been muddling through all along, cocking it up sometimes and covering up, like everyone else. Only they aren't as good as covering it up these days.

I think fiasco was not the right word to use of such a horrible tragedy while still in progress.