Russia’s Defence Ministry rejects reports of collision between trawler, submarine

The Russian Defense Ministry on Friday rejected the media reports that the Russian trawler tragedy in the Sea of Okhotsk was caused by a collision with a submarine.
"All the information spread by some mass media and social networks that the cause of the shipwreck in the Sea of Okhotsk of a big autonomy trawler Dalniy Vostok could have been a collision with a Russian submarine is false," the ministry’s official spokesman Gen. Maj. Igor Konashenkov said.
He stressed that "at the moment of the tragedy there were no submarines of the Navy in this water area of the Sea of Okhotsk."
The Dalniy Vostok freezer trawler wrecked in the Sea of Okhotsk 330 kilometers west of Krutogorovsky settlement in Russia’s Far Eastern Kamchatka Territory and 250 kilometers south of the city of Magadan on April 2. The trawler is owned by Magellan LLC and its home port is Nevelsk, the Sakhalin region.
There were 132 crew members onboard, including 78 Russians and 54 foreigners. At the moment, a total of 13 fishermen are considered as missing. So far, 63 people have been rescued and another 56 have died.