Polish President Lech Kaczynski
MSNBC, SMOLENSK, Russia - Polish President Lech Kaczynski and some of the country's highest military and civilian leaders died on Saturday when the presidential plane crashed as it came in for a landing in thick fog in western Russia, killing 97, officials said.
Russian and Polish officials said there were no survivors on the 26-year-old Tupolev, which was taking the president, his wife and staff to events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Katyn forest of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.
The crash devastated the upper echelons of Poland's political and military establishments. On board were the army chief of staff, the navy chief commander, and heads of the air and land forces. Also killed were the national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, Olympic Committee head, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers, the Polish foreign ministry said.
Although initial signs pointed to an accident with no indication of foul play, the death of a Polish president and much of the Polish state and defense establishment in Russia en route to commemorating one of the saddest events in Poland's long, complicated history with Russia, was laden with tragic irony.
Reflecting the grave sensibilities of the crash to relations between the two countries, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin personally assumed charge of the investigation. He landed in Smolensk Saturday with an entourage of Russian officials to meet Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who was flying in from Warsaw. The president's twin brother, former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kacynski, also flew there in a chartered plane, according to his party.
"This is unbelievable — this tragic, cursed Katyn," Kaczynski's predecessor, Aleksander Kwasniewski, said on TVN24 television.
It is "a cursed place, horrible symbolism," he said. "It's hard to believe. You get chills down your spine."
Pilot ignored instructions
Andrei Yevseyenkov, spokesman for the Smolensk regional government, said Russian dispatchers asked the crew to divert from the military airport in North Smolensk and land instead in Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belarus, or in Moscow because of the fog.
While traffic controllers generally have the final word in whether it is safe for a plane to land, they can and do leave it to the pilots' discretion.
Air Force Gen. Alexander Alyoshin confirmed that the pilot disregarded instructions to fly to another airfield.
"But they continued landing, and it ended, unfortunately, with a tragedy," the Interfax news agency quoted Alyoshin as saying. He added that the pilot makes the final decision about whether to land.
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3 Comments - Share Yours!:
A very appropriate title here, Patriot....as he was a "true friend of the West." This was a principled man - one who remembered what Ronald Reagan did to support the Polish people in their struggle to overthrow the tyranny of Communism. He responded as one of the first to join every coalition force the U.S. put together in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
A sad, sad day for all free men.
With Putin taking charge of the so-called accident investigation the real truth will never be know. Yes the forces of anti-communism have lost a true friend, but I'm sure Obama doesn't feel a loss.
Indeed, it is a sad day.
Obama told eastern Europe
how he felt about that part
of the world when he
scrapped the missle defense
program for eastern Europe.
He then threw in with the
Muslim world and continues
to to do so. The west has
lost a true friend and
co-patriot. I doubt the
mullah in the White House
has shed any tears.
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