Mystery still surrounds cause of Polish air tragedy

POLISH INVESTIGATORS say they have uncovered no evidence that Polish president Lech Kaczynski demanded that his pilot make a fatal crash landing in fog last Saturday.

Russian authorities confirmed yesterday that they had identified the body of Polish first lady Maria Kaczynska, who died along with her husband and 94 others in the air crash near the western Russian town of Smolensk.

Her remains will be flown home today, a day after those of Mr Kaczynski. The deceased president will lie in state from today at the presidential palace in Warsaw ahead of a state funeral on Saturday.

Mystery persists about why the aircraft clipped trees and crashed in flames after Russian tests yesterday revealed no mechanical defects.

Polish authorities say the aircraft had been fitted recently with new electronic equipment and the engine had been overhauled. But diplomats familiar with the aircraft have questioned why Warsaw still used a Soviet-built Tupolev 154 “badly in need of replacement”.

“It’s hard to understand how we are involved in costly missions in Afghanistan and Iraq but are unable for years to equip our [leaders] with proper planes,” said Prof Roman Kuzniar, an international affairs analyst at Warsaw University.

That has all turned the spotlight back on Mr Kaczynski. Asked whether the pilot was pressurised to land by the president, Poland’s chief prosecutor, Andrzej Seremet, said yesterday: “At the current level of the investigation we have no such information.”

After flight recorders revealed nothing unusual, Russian investigators said yesterday they had moved on to the voice recorders.

Mindful of the continuing week of mourning, Polish media have not dared even raise the possibility that Mr Kaczynski had a role in the crash. But the Russian media have recalled how, in 2008, Mr Kaczynski demanded that a pilot land his aircraft in Tblisi in the middle of the Georgian war; the pilot refused and diverted.

A Russian flight expert suggested in the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily that the crash was caused by “VIP passenger syndrome”. But this was dismissed by a colleague of Arkadiusz Protasiuk, the crash pilot.

“He was a tough man who wouldn’t let emotions prevail over common sense,” said Tomasz Pietrzak, another government pilot, on Polish radio. “He would certainly not risk passengers’ lives.”

The crash has also prompted reflection in political circles about whether the incident might have been the indirect consequence of years of competition between the president and Polish prime minister Donal Tusk.

Last Wednesday, Mr Tusk flew to Katyn for a memorial service with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. Feeling snubbed at not being invited, Mr Kaczynski, from a competing party, organised a competing event on Saturday to remember the 22,000 Polish soldiers massacred at Katyn in 1940.

“As a consequence of the crash, this unfortunate situation may finally be at an end,” said Andrzej Maciejewski, political analyst of the Sobieski Institute think tank.

Mr Kaczynski’s office published his final, undelivered speech yesterday, in which he paid tribute to the Katyn soldiers and the families who kept their memory alive, and condemned the Soviet cover-up as “the founding lie of the [communist] People’s Republic of Poland”. But the president, known for his anti-Russian tirades, saved his final words to thank Moscow for its assistance ahead of the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre.

The undelivered words carry additional poignancy now: “Let’s allow the Katyn wound to finally heal,” he planned to say. “We are already on the path; we should follow it to bring our nations closer and not stop or retreat.”

Mr Maciejewski of the Sobieski Institute said: “In future we will be able to distinguish between pre-April 10th Polish-Russian relations and post-April 10th.”

Source: Irishtimes

'VIP passenger syndrome' may have contributed to Polish plane crash

Russian aviation experts claimed that "VIP passenger syndrome" could have played a part in causing of the tragedy, as it was disclosed that Lech Kaczynski had previously tried to sack a pilot who refused to land a plane for him in dangerous circumstances.

Black box recordings have confirmed that the pilot, Arkadiusz Protasiuk, an experience airman serving with the Polish air force, had ignored warnings to divert to another airport because of heavy fog.
However, it has been suggested that Mr Kaczynski did not want to miss a ceremony for the 22,000 Poles massacred by Soviet forces in the Second World War and may have urged the air crew to continue trying to land the plane.

Viktor Timoshkin, an aviation expert, said: "It was quite obviously 'VIP passenger syndrome'. Controllers suggested that the aircraft's crew divert the plane to an alternate route. I am sure that the commander of the crew reported this to the president. But in response, for whatever reasons, he had a clear order to land."

In August 2008, Mr Kaczynski "shouted furiously" at a pilot who had disobeyed his order to land his plane in then war-torn Georgia for safety reasons. He later tried to have Captain Grzegorz Pietuczak removed from his post with the Polish air force for insubordination, however, Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister intervened. Captain Pietuczak was later awarded a medal for carrying out his duties conscientiously for his refusal to land having judged the risks.

A Russian aviation expert said yesterday: "If he tried to land three times and fell on the fourth then he probably had the 2008 incident in mind and that was why he felt he had to land at any price. In effect, he did not take the decision but the main passenger on board did - even if the main passenger did not utter a word to the pilot."

Andrzej Seremet, Poland's chief prosecutor, said that there was no information from the investigation so far to suggest that Mr Kaczynski had put undue pressure on the pilot.

A senior air traffic controller at the Russian airport where the Polish plane was trying to land stirred controversy by suggesting that the Polish pilots' poor knowledge of the Russian language was to blame.

"They were supposed to give us a report about their altitude on the approach to landing," he said. "They did not give it." When asked why, he said: "Because they have a bad command of the Russian language. There were Russian speakers among them but for them numbers were quite complex."

It came as tensions between Russia and Poland over the air crash were escalated when a Polish MP claimed the Kremlin was partly to blame for the tragedy.

The two countries have set aside centuries of mutual distrust to present a united and recrimination-free front but yesterday Artur Gorski, a member of the Law and Justice party founded by Mr Kaczynski, said that Russia may have tried to deliberately prevent Mr Kaczynski's plane from landing and thereby indirectly caused his death.

Mr Gorski said: "One version of events says that the plane approached the airport four times, because every time the Russians refused it permission to land; they wanted to send the plane with the president to an airport in Moscow or Minsk,

"They came up with some dubious reasons: that there was fog over the airport, that the navigation system didn't work as it was under repair, and that the airport had a short landing strip."

Mr Gorski suggested that the real reason Moscow did not want President Kaczynski to land was because he was due to attend a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of an infamous Soviet massacre of Polish officers.

The Russians, he claimed, did not want Mr Kaczynski to upstage a similar event hosted by Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, a few days earlier.

The Kremlin may also have feared that the Polish president, a noted hawk when it came to Russia, may have planned to criticise Moscow for not issuing a proper apology for the 1940 massacre, he added.

Mr Putin, who has taken charge of the investigation into the air crash, which is being carried out by both Russian and Polish teams, yesterday promised an "objective and thorough" investigation.

Bronislaw Komorowski, Poland's acting head of state, has announced an immediate review of regulations, or the lack of them, governing just which political and military leaders can fly together. The air crash was carrying nine senior military leaders, as well as the governor of Poland's central bank.

Source: Telegraph

Poland and Russia mourn President Kaczynski

The body of Polish President Lech Kaczynski is to lie in state in the capital Warsaw as the nation mourns the victims of the Smolensk air crash.

He and 95 others, including many top defence officials and public figures, died when their jet crashed en route to a war memorial service in Russia.

Russia is also marking a day of mourning, as relatives arrive in Moscow to try to identify the bodies of the victims.

Duncan Kennedy reports.


Source:BBC

Poland Mourns Death of Leaders, But Life Goes On

Poland is preparing for state funerals for President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, and is awaiting the repatriation of the bodies of many of its political and military elite - all killed in a plane crash in western Russia on Saturday.  Many Poles are slowly coming to grips with this tragedy.

More vigils and tributes - hundreds of people crowded into the Church of Saint Anna in central Warsaw for a special mass for those killed in the crash.

Many mourners young people, mostly students who earlier had marched silently through the city carrying Polish flags and pictures of the President and his wife.

This young woman, Katherine, says she came in tribute to the country's leaders and because the rector of her university was among those killed.

Nearly 100 people were aboard the flight from Warsaw to the western Russian city of Smolensk.  The plane crashed as it tried to land amid heavy fog, killing all onboard - President Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria and a delegation that included Poland's top military leaders as well as many political and cultural figures.

They were on their way to attend a memorial service to commemorate the murder of some 22,000 Polish military officers and civilians who were massacred by the Soviet Union's secret police during World War II.

Jacek Kucharczyk is President of the Institute of Public Affairs in Warsaw.  He says Saturday's plane crash has shocked the nation, but that it has not sparked a political crisis.

"I think that the reaction to this disaster was very quiet and peaceful, and people wanted to mourn the dead above their political views and how they evaluated the President and his party," said Jacek Kucharczyk. "There didn't seem to be any sense that the country is in a fragile situation that institutions aren't working."

As the Polish Constitution mandates, the speaker of parliament has taken on the role of interim president and new elections are to be scheduled within the next 2.5 months.

Meanwhile life is slowly returning to normal.  Shops are open; people are at work.  But many Poles are also asking questions such as why so many of the country's political leaders were traveling on one plane and why, if as Russian authorities say, the pilot ignored warnings against trying to land in poor weather conditions.

But for now many Poles are seeking comfort in candlelight vigils and in church services.

Source: voanews.com/

Poland in shock at news of president's death

The President of Poland, President Lech Kaczynski and his wife have been killed, along with 132 others in a plane crash in the Smolensk region of Russia.

The people of Poland are in shock today as news comes through of the tragedy.

The plane on which the president was travelling was on its final approach to the airport when it went down.

"The Polish presidential plane did not make it to the runway while landing. Tentative findings indicate that it hit the treetops and fell apart," said Sergei Anufriev, governor of the Smolensik region.

The Polish foreign ministry have confirmed that the president is dead.

"The plane caught fire after the crash. Teams began attempting to pull out passengers from the badly damaged airplane," said a Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman in Warsaw.

It has been confirmed that the head of the Polish army, as well as several senior officials and their families were onboard the plane.

Born into the hard times of post-war Poland, President Kaczynski was a contraversial yet popular leader, who was determined to pull Poland away from its Post-Cold War legacy.

Poland in shock as president feared dead in crash

Lech Kaczynski has been president of Poland since December 2005 Photo: AP

President Lech Kaczynski was travelling with his wife from Warsaw to Smolensk airport, 220 miles southwest of Moscow, when his plane crashed in thick fog.

Poland was left stunned by the news that their president, his wife, and a whole swath of the Polish elite had been killed.

A television newsreader fought back tears as she relayed the news that the head of the Polish army and the head of the presidential administration were also on board the plane, along with the president's wife and families of other senior officials.

The plane was also carrying the governor of Poland's central bank, Slawomir Skrzypek.

Sergei Antufiev, the regional governor of the Smolensk, said that everyone on board had been killed.

"It clipped the tops of the trees, crashed down and broke into pieces," Mr Antufiev, told Russia-24 television news network by telephone. "There were no survivors." Polish state news agency PAP also said there were no survivors.

William Hague, shadow foreign minister, wrote on Twitter: "Very sad this morning about the death of Lech Kaczynski in a plane crash - a brave man who was interned by the Communists for his beliefs."

Mr Kaczynski, 60, had been president since December 2005. He was married with one daughter.

Mr Kaczynski had been flying to Katyn, near Smolensk, to commemorate Russian and Polish victims of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

Thousands of Polish prisoners of war and intellectuals were murdered at Katyn by Soviet forces in spring 1940 in an enduring symbol for Poles of their suffering under Soviet rule.

Families of those killed at Katyn were also on board the plane, the Polish government official at the airport said.

In the case of a president's death, the speaker of the lower chamber of parliament, Bronislaw Komorowski, takes over as head of state, Mr Komorowski's assistant Jerzy Smolinski told Reuters.

Conditions around the airport were described as foggy when the Tupolev Tu-154 came down a mile from the airport.

Source: telegraph.co.uk/

Polish president feared dead in crash

Lech Kacyznski, Poland’s president, was feared dead Saturday morning when the airliner carrying him and a large delegation crashed near the Russian city of Smolensk; Piotr Paszkowski, the foreign ministry spokesman, says there were 88 people aboard the aircraft, and that there were no survivors.

The Russian-built Tu-154 airliner apparently hit a tree just before 11 am local time while landing in foggy conditions, Mr Paszkowski told the Gazeta Wyborcza website. The airliner then caught fire.

“It looks very bad,” said Mr Paszkowski.

Reporters on the scene said they could see remnants of the airplane scattered among the trees near the airport.

As well as Mr Kaczynski and his wife, Maria, the aircraft was carrying a delegation of as many as 132 people that reportedly included Ryszard Kaczorowski, the former president of Poland’s London-based government-in-exile, Slawomir Skrzypek, the central bank governor, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, the presidential candidate of the left-wing Democratic Left Alliance, as well as bishops, military officials and other dignitaries.

They were flying to Russia to take part in commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the killing of 20,000 Polish officers by the Soviets in 1940. The best-known murder site, Katyn, where 4,000 Poles were killed, lies just outside Smolensk.

Bronislaw Komorowski, the speaker of parliament, is headed to Warsaw to take over Mr Kaczynski’’s duties.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

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Putin: Easing the burden of memory

Certain dates, events, and places become emblems of unforgettable suffering for an entire people. Auschwitz holds that meaning for Jews, as does the 1915 death march for Armenians or the 1922 Smyrna massacre for Greeks. Polish memory is haunted by the Red Army’s execution of 22,000 Polish officers and intellectuals in the Katyn forest in the spring of 1940.

So Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was making a valuable, if belated, gesture of reconciliation Wednesday when he laid a wreath at the Katyn gravesite, under a memorial inscribed with the names of the murdered Polish prisoners of war. During the communist era, Polish schoolchildren were taught that the Katyn crimes were committed by the Nazis. Poles knew this was an official lie. Finally, in 1992, then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin ended the lies by releasing a copy of a Stalin-era document resolving to kill the Polish prisoners because they were “inveterate and incorrigible enemies of the Soviet power.’’

Hard as it may be, Putin should now complete the work of reconciliation by recognizing the Katyn massacre as a war crime and ordering that all remaining Stalinist archives on that crime be opened to researchers. Truth is inseparable from reconciliation.

Source: boston.com/

Polish Air Force 1 Crashed Heading for Katyn Massacre Anniversary

The plane that crashed carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 86 others near Smolensk was taking the passengers to mark the Katyn massacre near the town.

Kaczynski was due to visit Smolensk to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, when Soviet troops killed thousands of Poles.

The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre (Polish: zbrodnia katyńska, 'Katyń crime'), was a mass murder of thousands of Polish prisoners of war (primarily military officers), intellectuals, policemen, and other public servants by the Soviet NKVD, based on a proposal from Lavrentiy Beria to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps. Dated March 5, 1940, this official document was then approved (signed) by the entire Soviet Politburo including Joseph Stalin and Beria.

The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000, the most commonly cited number being 21 768. The victims were murdered in the Katyn Forest in Russia, the Kalinin and Kharkov prisons and elsewhere. About 8,000 were officers taken prisoner during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, the rest being Poles arrested for allegedly being "intelligence agents, gendarmes, saboteurs, landowners, factory owners, lawyers, priests, and officials."

Nazi Germany announced the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest in 1943. The revelation led to the end of diplomatic relations between Moscow and the London-based Polish government-in-exile.

Source: novinite.com/

Putin mourns Stalin-era massacre of Polish forces in unprecedented gesture to Poland

MOSCOW — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attended a memorial ceremony on Wednesday for 22,000 Polish prisoners who were killed by Soviet secret police during World War II in an unprecedented gesture of good will and reconciliation to Poland.

Putin - accompanied by his Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk - became the first Russian leader to ever commemorate the Katyn massacres with a Polish leader, and said the two nations' "fates had been inexorably joined" by the atrocities.

The 22,000 Polish officers, prisoners and intellectuals were massacred by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's secret police in 1940 in Katyn, a village near Russia's border with Belarus.

In what appeared to be his harshest condemnation of Stalin's rule to date, Putin said: "In our country there has been a clear political, legal and moral judgment made of the evil acts of this totalitarian regime, and this judgment cannot be revised."

But his speech stopped short of offering any apology to the Polish nation or calling the massacres a war crime, as some commentators in Poland had expected.

Also, while giving the go-ahead to a joint historic commission on the matter, Putin gave no concrete pledge that all Soviet archives documenting it would finally be unsealed.

Tusk used his emotional speech about the Polish victims to push Putin on this point.

"Prime minister, they are here. They are in this soil. The eye sockets of their bullet-pierced sculls are looking and waiting to see whether we are able to transform violence and lies into reconciliation," Tusk said.

For half a century, Soviet officials claimed that the mass executions had been carried out by Nazi occupiers during the Second World War. But the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev's rule admitted in 1990 that the crimes had been committed by Stalin's NKVD secret police, a precursor to the KGB.

The disclosure opened the floodgates of historical consciousness across the Soviet Union, speeding its demise as nations across the Eastern bloc awoke to the horrors of the Soviet regime and sought independence.

As recently as December, Putin resisted a broad denunciation of Stalin's reign. He told a call-in show with the Russian public that it was "impossible to make an overall judgment" against Stalin because he had industrialized the nation and played a key role in defeating the Nazis.

Russia also has clashed with its neighbours in Eastern Europe over what it has perceived as offences to the legacy of Stalin and the Red Army. The relocation of a Soviet war memorial in Estonia in 2007 was met with a bristling reaction from Moscow, as was a resolution made by European lawmakers in 2009 equating Stalinism and Fascism.

Putin's meeting with Tusk seems to be part of a broader Kremlin effort to avoid similar confrontations and improve ties with Europe.

President Dmitry Medvedev wrapped up a two-day visit to Slovakia on Tuesday, and said in the capital, Bratislava, that the EU-member state was a "very convenient and open door for Russia to the European Union."

"We are ready to actively go through this door," Medvedev said during a televised news conference with his Slovak counterpart, Ivan Gasparovic.

During the visit - marking the 65th anniversary of the Slovak capital's liberation from Nazi rule - Medvedev gave Slovak officials World War II documents from Russia's state archives.

Associated Press writer Monika Scislowska in Warsaw contributed to this report.

Source:AFP

Poland president dead as west Russia plane crash kills 132

Polish president Lech Kaczynski was killed on Saturday as his plane crashed on approach to Smolensk airport in western Russia, local officials said.

One hundred and thirty-two passengers in total were on board the plane, Polish officials told Haaretz, adding that the crash appeared accidental and that so far there was no suspicion of a terror attack.

There was no indication as to whether the crash was caused by a technical failure or human error.
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Poland's foreign ministry confirmed that the president and his wife, Maria, were aboard the plane. Polish state news agency PAP said there were no survivors in the crash, recorded at 10:50AM local time some 400km west of Moscow.

The Russian-built Tupolev Tu-154, which was over 20 years old, airplane went down some 1.5km from Smolensk airport in foggy conditions. The plane reportedly struck trees as it approached the airport and caught fire. The flames have since been extinguished.

Polish sources told Haaretz that despite a recent upgrade, the Smolensk airport not been fitted with special anti-fog radar common in the West.

A Polish official said the head of the Polish army and the head of the presidential administration were also on board the plane, along with the central bank governor and the other senior officials.

"The plane caught fire after the crash. Teams began attempting to pull out passengers from the badly damaged airplane," said a Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman in Warsaw.

Kaczynski was due to visit Smolensk to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, when Soviet troops killed 22,000 Poles. Planned ceremonies in Katyn were called off. Attendees said they would instead pray for the victims of the plane crash

The Polish government will hold an extraordinary meeting later on Saturday, the government press office said in a statement.

Bronislaw Komorowski, the speaker of Poland's parliament and a former defense minister will take over as interim president, sources told Haaretz.

Komorovski had already been named as a candidate to succeed Kaczynski following elections later in 2010.

Kaczynski, 60, became president in December 2005 after defeatingcurrent Prime Minister Donald Tusk in that year's presidential vote. The nationalist conservative was the twin brother of Poland's opposition
leader, former prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski

Source: haaretz.com/

Reports are coming of a plane carrying the Polish president Lech Kaczynski and his wife has crashed in Russia killing all passengers.

Initial reports had said that at least 87 people were killed in the crash but officials have confirmed that all passengers on the plain heading to an airport in Smolensk a Western city in Russia have been killed.

Reports also say that the Chief of General Staff of the Polish Armed Forces and the Polish central bank governor was also on the plain.

Lech Kaczynski and his wife were due to visit the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, in which thousands of Poles were killed by Russian troops in the Soviet era.

The Polish Foreign Ministry also confirmed that the Polish president Lech Kaczynski was on board the plain the crashed at 10:56AM local time.

The Tupolev Tu-154 model plain is thought to have crashed in foggy weather but no official comment has come from the Polish or Russian government.

The Tupolev Tu-154, a Soviet era built plain is banned in many airports around the world.

Source: nationalturk.com/

Polish President dies in plane crash

Eighty-seven people including Polish President Lech Kaczynski died when a plane flying from Warsaw crashed near its intended destination in the Russian city of Smolensk, Itar-Tass news agency reported, citing the Russian Emergencies Ministry.

The incident happened in thick fog as the aircraft came in to land.


Source: timesofmalta.com/

Plane crash 'carrying Polish president' kills 87 people

Reports from Moscow say a plane carrying the Polish president Lech Kaczynski has crashed in western Russia and at least 87 people have been killed.

Russian media and the foreign Polish ministry is alleged to have said the president and his wife were on board the plane at the time, and it is not yet known whether there has been any survivors.

It is believed the plane crashed this morning near the city of Smolensk, killing 87 people.

Mr Kaczynski was due to visit the city to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre; during which Russian soldiers killed 22,000 Polish prisoners of war 70 years ago.

Source: inthenews.co.uk/

Crash kills scores, Poland’s president

SMOLENSK, Russia - Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife died Saturday along with about 130 other passengers when their plane crashed while coming in for a landing in western Russia, officials said.

The governor of the Smolensk region, where the crash took place about 11 a.m. (3 a.m. ET), said no one survived.

"The Polish presidential plane did not make it to the runway while landing. Tentative findings indicate that it hit the treetops and fell apart," Sergei Anufriev said on state news channel Rossiya-24. "Nobody has survived the disaster."

The Polish foreign ministry confirmed that Kaczynski and his wife were aboard the plane.

The head of Russia's top investigative body, Sergei Markin, said there were a total of 132 people on the plane, a Tu-154.

A Polish government official said the head of the Polish army and the head of the presidential administration were also on board the plane, along with families of other senior officials.

"The plane caught fire after the crash. Teams began attempting to pull out passengers from the badly damaged airplane," said a Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman in Warsaw.

Editor's note: Please check back for details on this breaking news story.

Source: msnbc.msn.com/