Did the Russians have escape pods before the Kursk disaster?
If war starts it will not survive long—just enough time to launch its weapons before it and the crew go to Orthodox Heaven.
Kursk sank in 354 feet of water and had a rescue trunk in the aft end of the submarine. Escape to the surface was theoretically possible. However, if you managed to survive the ascent, you would not survive long on the surface due to hyperthermia from the extremely cold Arctic Sea water.
Twenty three of the 118 crew did survive the initial sinking. However, the exterior hatch of the rescue trunk was jammed shut because the explosions/hard landing on the bottom had distorted the hatch frame. A surviving crewman volunteered to try using it and drown. His body was found in the flooded escape trunk by the rescue divers. The others either burned to death in the post-sinking flash fire or suffocated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Kursk_(K-141)