Russia Points to Pilot Error in Polish President’s Crash

Posted on Jan 12, 2011

Wikimedia Commons

Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and several other political or military dignitaries were among the 96 killed in an airplane crash April 10.

Last April’s plane crash in Smolensk, Russia, which claimed the lives of Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other passengers, was due to error on the part of the Tu-154’s Polish pilots—or so say Russian investigators, drawing mixed reactions from the Polish side.  —KA

BBC:

Poland’s interior minister accepted the findings but said Russian officials had also been at fault.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk cut short a holiday in response to the report and was returning to Poland for talks with the minister, Jerzy Miller.

In other reaction, Lech Kaczynski’s twin brother Jaroslaw condemned the Russian report as a “joke against Poland”, saying the Russian investigators had failed to produce evidence.

Russia’s handling of the disaster had previously been widely commended.

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