"The authorities have been quite open" about Saturday's accident in which 20 people were killed, said Alexei Venediktov, editor-in-chief at Echo of Moscow radio station, one of the few independent media outlets in Russia.

Independent military expert Vitaly Shlykov agreed, pointing to differences in the authorities' approach to Saturday's accident and to the Kursk submarine sinking, when all 118 sailors on board lost their lives.

"It's clear that in the case of the Nerpa, the navy wanted to break with a long-standing tradition of secrecy," Shlykov said, pointing in particular to the timeliness of the announcement of the disaster on the same day it happened.

The sinking of the Kursk submarine was not announced until August 14, two days after the accident. Then President Vladimir Putin was apparently not told for several hours and did not visit victims' families until 11 days later.

This time was different, said Shlykov.

"The president was informed from the start and no-one said it was the fault of the Americans," he said, after an announcement by President Dmitry Medvedev's press office that the Kremlin was being updated on a regular basis.

Russian authorities maintained for a long time that the Kursk sank after "a collision with a foreign submarine belonging to a NATO country."

They admitted only months later that the main cause had been the explosion of torpedoes on board.

In the case of Saturday's accident with the Nerpa submarine in the Sea of Japan, officials quickly pointed out that the main cause was a malfunctioning of a fire alarm system, which poured poisonous gas into the vessel.

"There is a huge difference between the official silence over the Kursk accident and what they are saying about the Nerpa," said Alexander Golts, an independent analyst in Moscow who runs a website about military affairs.

But many questions about the accident on the Nerpa remain unanswered -- and Russian Navy officials were reluctant to speak to an AFP reporter in Vladivostok, Russia's Pacific fleet base near where the accident occurred.

Images of two of the survivors were only shown on Russian television on Tuesday, a full three days after the accident, in brief images as they met with local governor Sergei Darkin of the Primorsky region of eastern Russia.

Russian newspapers have asked why 208 people were on board a vessel built for a crew of around 80.

They also want to know why crew members did not use their gas masks to protect themselves from the toxic freon gas pumped by the fire alarm system.

"It's a pity we haven't been able to get the information first hand," said Sergei Dorenko, editor-in-chief of Russian News Service radio, who made programmes on the Kursk tragedy that were highly critical of the authorities.

Venediktov agreed that many questions remained unanswered and said survivors were not allowed to speak publicly until the end of an official inquiry. "For the moment we have no-one to ask until the inquiry is over," he said.

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