1998 Incident Shortly before midnight, 10 September 1998,
Vepr was in port at
Severomorsk with the crew of
its sistership K-461 Volk aboard. Alexander Kuzminykh (), a 19-year-old seaman who was being detained on punishment charges, broke out of his quarters, killed his guard by stabbing him with a chisel, then seized his
AKS-74U assault rifle and fatally shot five more sailors. He then took two hostages, whom he later killed. He barricaded himself in the torpedo room, and for 20 hours repeatedly threatened to set a fire to detonate the torpedoes. While
Vepr had no nuclear weapons and her reactor was shut down, the detonation of her torpedoes while she was tied up at the dock would have ruptured her reactor, creating what the regional director of the
Federal Security Service (FSB), Vladimir Prikhodko described as "a nuclear catastrophe ... a second
Chernobyl." Attempts to persuade him to surrender failed. Kuzminykh's mother was flown to the naval base but was unable to persuade her son to give himself up. The situation remained a standoff until early on the morning of 12 September, when a special
anti-terrorist commando unit of the Russian
Federal Security Service (FSB) stormed the torpedo room. Kuzminykh was found fit when he was conscripted at a
St. Petersburg enlistment office, even though he had suffered from a mental disorder and had been inhaling intoxicants. When Kuzminykh volunteered for the submarine service, he passed additional medical and psychiatric tests with high marks. It was later declared that he suffered from a mental illness that was not detected in the draft. In the aftermath of the incident Russia made efforts to improve recruitment and monitoring of military personnel deployed on nuclear-powered vessels. Only professional, non-conscript sailors could serve on them. == Refurbishment ==