| Series Title | EurActiv |
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| Series Details | 03.04.17 |
| Publication Date | 03/04/2017 |
| Content Type | News |
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An airliner carrying Poland's President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other senior figures in Polish society crashed on 10 April 2010 near the Russian city of Smolensk. There were no survivors. The Polish representatives were flying to Russia to take part in commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the killing of 20,000 Polish officers by the Soviet Union in 1940. The best-known murder site, Katyn, where 4,000 Poles were killed, lay just outside Smolensk. An initial investigation into the disaster published in 2011 concluded that mistakes by the military pilots were the primary cause of the disaster. The report also said that errors made by Russian officials contributed to the crash. In March 2015 Polish prosecutors began a process of presenting two charges to air traffic controllers involved in guiding the aircraft into land at the military airport in Smolensk. However, speculation as to the true cause for the crash deeply divided Polish society. The Law and Justice Party (PiS) led by the President's twin brother Jarosław Kaczynski had continued to suggest the crash might have been caused by an explosion on board and called for a new inquiry when it regained power in 2015. This began its work in February 2016. On the seventh anniversary of the crash in April 2017 the latest commission of inquiry reported that it 'considers the possibility of an explosion to be quite likely'. It also claimed that Russian air traffic controllers deliberately misled Polish pilots about their location as the presidential plane approached the runway of the airport. The ramifications of the tragedy for Poland had also extended to the EU as Poland resisted the re-election of former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk as President of the European Council in March 2017. Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz accused Tusk of 'diplomatic treason' with regard to the plane crash. |
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| Source Link | http://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/poland-accuses-russian-air-traffic-controllers-over-smolensk-air-crash/ |
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| Countries / Regions | Poland, Russia |
