The Kremlin did not want news of the uprising to spread and was therefore willing, perhaps even prepared, to present it to world public opinion as an attempted defection to the West - contrary to Sablin's intentions.
Gregory D. Young was the first Westerner to investigate the mutiny as part of his 1982 Masters thesis Mutiny on Storozhevoy: A Case Study of Dissent in the Soviet Navy, and later in the book The Last Sentry by Young and Nate Braden.