The Polish presidential plane crashes: President killed, General Staff decapitated (5)

 (BRUSSELS2) The Polish presidential plane - a Tupolev Tu-154 M - crashed in Russia on Saturday morning, near Smolensk, as it was preparing to land at Siewiernyk airport. The accident made no survivors. There are 96 killed (assessment revised downwards after the first estimates which spoke of 130 dead). They were going to Katyn, to pay homage to the thousands of Polish prisoners executed 70 years ago, in the spring of 1940.

Decapitated political and military apparatus

No survivors

President Lech Kaczinski and his wife were on board, surrounded by many prominent figures from the Republic of Poland: Deputy Speaker of the Sejm Jerzy SZMAJDZINSKI, presidential candidate for the left SLD, and the other vice-president of the Diet (PiS) Krzysztof PUTRA; the President of the Central Bank, Sawomir SKRZYPEK; Deputy Defense Minister Stanislaw KOMOROWSKI; State Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Andrzej KREMER; the President of the Institute of National Remembrance, Janusz KURTYKA; the last president of the Polish government in exile (1990!), Ryszard KACZOROWSKI, as well as many deputies or senators, relatives of the victims of Katyn as well as former members of Solidarnosc, such as Anna WALENTYNOWICZ (activist in the shipyards).

 Decapitated General Staff

The president was also accompanied by around a hundred officers, including the Chief of Staff, Franciszek GGOR (member of the EU military committee); national security chief Alkesander SZCZYGO; the commanding general of the armed forces in operation, Bronislaw KWIATKOWSKI; Air Force Commander Andrzej BASIK; Land Force Commander Maj.-Gen. Tadeusz BUK; the commander of the special forces, Maj.-Gen. Wodzimierz POTASISKI; Navy Vice Admiral Andrzej KARWETA; the director of the training center, Gen. bryg. Brig. Kazimierz GILARSKY.

It is part of the leadership of the Polish army which is thus beheaded. An army already bereaved by the Casa C-295M disaster in January 2008, which killed 20 people, including several Air Force officials.

La final list of missing personalities

The Polish Council of Ministers met urgently on Saturday. The official flags were lowered in all the barracks and thus lowered on all the official buildings. Government and public websites bear the sign of mourning. Logs are displayed in black & white. The emotion is intense in Poland, there is talk of a "new drama of Katyn" 70 years after the massacre of Polish officers by Soviet troops.

At the level of the European authorities, the Secretary General of NATO, Anders Fogh Rassmussen, was one of the first to express his condolences. At 15 p.m., the European Union issued an official press release (download). According to our information, Cathy Ashton, EU chief diplomat, who was to visit Poland in the coming days, has decided - in agreement with the Polish authorities - to postpone her visit. The flags of the European institutions will be lowered to half-mast on Monday.

NB: Gazeta Wyborcza publishes a special edition on the crash of the presidential plane in Smolensk: download

The causes of the accident

Weather...

The weather was bad with a lot of fog. The presidential plane tried several times to land (4 times according to Polish radio). The fourth was fatal. The plane, flying very low, and reportedly hanging in trees 300-400 meters from the airport runway, caught fire and disintegrated.

But not only

According to information gathered by the Polish daily Gazeta from military sources, the Russian air traffic control services advised all planes not to land, and proposed to divert to Minsk. Smolensk airport does not have an aircraft guidance system in foggy weather (it is a former military airport which has only recently opened to civilian traffic). But the Russian control tower could not prohibit the Polish presidential plane which, for an unknown reason, persisted in trying to land at the airport. Thus, 30 minutes before the accident, a Russian military plane Il-76, which was transporting Russian national security officials, made
U-turn to land elsewhere.

This is not the first time that a Tu-154 has had an accident: there have been around sixty flight incidents, including more than thirty fatalities for this aircraft designed in the 1960s, put into service in the 1970s. and which was produced in nearly 1000 copies.

(Nicolas Gros-Verheyde)

(photo credits: Polish Army, Russian TV, Polish TV)