Warsaw, Poland – Polish President Lech Kaczynski and a slew of other high-ranking officials were killed in a strange plane crash while allegedly trying to land in Smolensk, Russia. Among the dead were Kaczynski, his wife, the central bank chairman, Poland’s army chief, MPs and several leading historians.
They had been flying a Tupolev-154, a Soviet-manufactured plane that was more than 20 years old. According to the official report, the conditions were foggy and the pilot allegedly crashed on his fourth attempt at landing, hitting some trees.
Russian government spokesmen claimed the pilot was at fault for the crash, insistent on landing at Smolensk and ignoring calls to fly to Minsk or Moscow. According to them, the plane ‘hit the tops of trees and broke into pieces’.
Critics questioned the official story, however, noting the historic mutual animosity between the Kremlin camp and the Kaczynski contingent.
“It is certainly very suspicious,” one highly ranked national security official remarked on condition of anonymity.
“Putin will have a lot to answer for, and the international community will expect the highest degree of transparency and accountability in ascertaining how this atrocity occurred.”
The Kaczynski contingent had been flying into Russia from Warsaw to mark the 70th anniversary of the Soviet massacre of thousands of native Poles at Katyn. In a supposed gesture of goodwill, Soviet Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had agreed to attend the ceremony even though Kaczynski was an outspoken critic of the Russian regime.
The historic mutual hostility between Kaczynski’s government and the Kremlin only deepened the suspicion of foul play, with many questioning the official story and the timing of the incident.
Lech Kaczynski had been a vocal critic of Russia, at one point saying “We will see the full disintegration of the Russian empire and distance ourselves from the Russian threat.”
As mayor of Warsaw, Kaczynski had also angered the Kremlin by naming a city square after a Chechen named Dzhokhar Dudayev, who Russia claimed was a ‘terrorist’. The Kremlin responded by proposing to change the name of a Moscow street in honor of Mikhail Muravyov, a mass murderer known as “the hangman” for his slaughter of Polish insurgents in 1863.
In alignment with his distrust of the Russian regime, Kaczynski had refused to attend an earlier ceremony held a few days earlier, organized by the Russian government and attended by Putin and Kaczynski’s domestic rival Donald Tusk. Tusk now succeeds Kaczynski as President until new elections can be held.
The mass death represents a widespread change in Polish politics and a possibly friendlier attitude towards the Russian government, now that a slew of its most outspoken critics have been eliminated.
