Polish president and wife among 88 confirmed dead as plane crashes in Russia

[alienlovechild 75]

Polish president Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria have been killed after their plane crashed on approach to Smolensk airport in western Russia.

There were conflicting reports today of the number of people on board the flight. Russian news agencies reported at least 88 people died in the crash near Smolensk airport in western Russia, citing the Russian Emergencies Ministry. They reported 132 people were aboard the Tupolev Tu-154. But Polish officials said 88 people were on board when the plane crashed. Sky News reported 96 dead.

Pilot error has been blamed for the tragedy after it emerged he turned down the opportunity to land at an alternative runway in thick fog. Witnesses said the pilot made three or four attempts to land before crashing into woodland nearby. According to reports, the pilot accelerated as the plane came in to land and at that point lost contact with air traffic control.

As news of the tragedy spread, Prime Minister Donald Tusk called an extraordinary meeting of his Cabinet and the national flag was lowered to half-staff at the presidential palace, where people gathered to lay flowers and light candles.

'Nothing like this has ever happened in Poland': A video grab shows more of the wreckage of the president's plane Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been put in charge of a commission investigating the crash, the Kremlin said. The governor of the Smolensk region, where the crash took place about 11am (0700 GMT), said no one survived.

"The Polish presidential plane did not make it to the runway while landing. Tentative findings indicate that it hit the treetops and fell apart," Sergei Anufriev said on state news channel Rossiya-24. "Nobody has survived the disaster." Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he had ordered a two-minute silence at noon (1000GMT) Sunday.

Also among the victims was Anna Walentynowicz, whose firing in August 1980 from the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk sparked a workers' strike that spurred the eventual creation of the Solidarity freedom movement. She went on to be a prominent member.

The crash occurred about 1.5 km from Smolensk airport in foggy conditions.

State news channel Rossiya-24 showed footage from the crash site, with pieces of the plane scattered widely amid leafless trees and small fires burning in woods shrouded with fog. A tail fin with the Polish red and white colours stuck up from the debris.

Poland's president is commander-in-chief of its armed forces but the position's domestic duties are chiefly symbolic. The president and his wife were on their way to attend a World War Two memorial service. Kaczynski's wife, Maria, was an economist. They had a daughter, Marta, and two granddaughters. A Polish government official said the head of the Polish army and the head of the presidential administration were also on board the plane, along with the president's wife and families of other senior officials. The Army chief of staff, Gen. Franciszek Gagor, National Bank President Slawomir Skrzypek and Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer were on the passenger list.

"The plane caught fire after the crash. Teams began attempting to pull out passengers from the badly damaged airplane," said a Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman in Warsaw.

Poland's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Piotr Paszkowski, said there were 89 people on the passenger list but one person had not shown up.

THE VICTIMS

Lech Kaczysnki - Polish president.

Maria Kaczynska - The president's wife

Ryszard Kaczorowski - Poland's last president-in-exile

Aleksander Szczyglo - head of the National Security Office

Pawel Wypych - presidential aide

Mariusz Handzlik - presidential aide

Jerzego Szmajdzinski - deputy parliament speaker

Andrzej Kremer - Deputy Foreign Minister

Gen. Franciszek Gagor - head of the army chief of staff

Andrzej Przewoznik - minister in charge of WWII memorials

Slawomir Skrzypek - head of the National Bank of Poland

Janusz Kurtyka - head of the National Remembrance Institute

Przemyslaw Gosiewski - lawmaker

Zbigniew Wassermann - lawmaker

Grzegorz Dolniak - lawmaker

Janusz Kochanowski - civil rights commissioner

Bishop Tadeusz Ploski - army chaplain

The president and his wife were on their way to a memorial service for the victims of the Katyn massacre which, in 1940, saw thousands of Polish prisoners of war murdered (primarily military officers), intellectuals, policemen, and other public servants by the Soviet NKVD.

Polish-Russian relations had been improving of late after being poisoned for decades over the Katyn massacre.

Russia never has formally apologized for the murders of some 22,000 Polish officers, but Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's decision to attend a memorial ceremony earlier this week in the forest near Katyn was seen as a gesture of goodwill toward reconciliation.

The presidential Tu-154 was at least 20 years old. Polish officials have long discussed replacing the planes that carry the country's leaders but said they lacked the funds.

According to the Aviation Safety Network, there have been 66 crashes involving Tu-154s, including six in the past five years. The Russian carrier Aeroflot recently withdrew its Tu-154 fleet from service.

Kaczynski, 60, became president in December 2005 after defeating Tusk in that year's presidential vote.

The nationalist conservative was the twin brother of Poland's opposition leader, former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Kaczynski had said he would seek a second term in presidential elections this fall. He was expected to face an uphill struggle against Parliament speaker Bronislaw Komorowski, the candidate of Tusk's governing Civic Platform party.

According to the constitution, Komorowski would take over presidential duties.

Piotr Winczorek, law professor and constitutional expert, said: "The speaker of the parliament takes over presidential responsibilities. In fact, Bronislaw Komorowski should already take the office.

"The speaker has two weeks to announce new presidential election and they have to take place within two months from the announcement. There is no room for manoeuvre here.

"The constitution says the central bank governor is named by the president and approved by the parliament. The parliament is incomplete at the moment and should be filled before the central bank governor is named." Jacek Wasilewski, professor at SWPS (Higher School of Social Psychology, added: "The political consequences will be long term and possibly will change the entire future landscape of Polish politics.

"Of course Law and Justice has taken the greatest blow from this event, but it does not make Civic Platform's life any easier. It is hard to be opposed to someone who suffered such a great loss.

Last year, Poland was the only EU nation to avoid recession and posted economic growth of 1.7 percent.

The country sent troops to the U.S.-led war in Iraq and recently boosted its contingent in Afghanistan to some 2,600 soldiers.

U.S. Patriot missiles are expected to be deployed in Poland this year. That was a Polish condition for a 2008 deal - backed by both Kaczynski and Tusk - to host long-range missile defense interceptors. The deal, which was struck by the Bush administration, angered Russia and was later reconfigured under President Barack Obama's administration.

Under the Obama plan, Poland would host a different type of missile defense interceptors as part of a more mobile system and at a later date, probably not until 2018.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1264964/BREAKING-NEWS-Plane-carrying-Polish-president-crashes-Russia.html

[Niels Bohr 72]

This is terrible news.

[luckytxn 2,264]

Read this morning. Horrible and a tragedy for Poland. My prayers are with all the families.

[scandal 951]

Wow. Truly shocking and sad. An awful tragedy for Poland

[almaty 19]

sad news..

[Pooky 3,781]

A tragedy for Poland.

[dakay ♥ 10]

sad news (F)

Edited April 10, 2010 by ♫ yakad ♫

[jundp 191]

This is so sad. I also saw this:

But also aboard the plane were war veterans and surviving family members of Poles killed by the Soviets. There was 90-year-old Ryszard Kaczorowski, Poland's last "president-in-exile" during the Soviet years. And Anna Walentynowicz, the shipyard worker whose dismissal sparked the Solidarity union protests that eventually led to the collapse of Polish communism.

source

[Nagishkaw 510]

[Calypso 464]

"Eternal repose grant to them, O Lord, and let Your perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace. Amen."

That's truly sad considering the purpose of their travel. Was that purely an accident?

My husband and I had a date in Warszawa Restaurant on Thursday. He showed me earlier the Yahoo news article about that plane crash.

Our seventh president, Ramon Magsaysay, died when his C-47 presidential plane crashed on Mt. Manunggal in 1957 after visiting Cebu.

[gabby4ever 1]

terrible news...RIP

[almaty 19]

[one...two...tree 2,762]

So sad.

[Peikko 1,575]

WARSAW, Poland Russian investigators suggested human error may have been to blame in the plane crash that killed the Polish president and 95 others, saying Monday that were no technical problems with the Soviet-made plane.

The Tu-154 went down while trying to land Saturday in dense fog near Smolensk airport in western Russia. All aboard were killed, including President Lech Kaczynski and dozens of Polish political, military and religious leaders.

They had been traveling in the Polish government-owned plane to attend a memorial at nearby Katyn forest honoring thousands of Polish military officers who were executed 70 years ago by Josef Stalin's secret police.

The pilot had been warned of bad weather in Smolensk, and was advised by traffic controllers to land elsewhere -- which would have delayed the Katyn observances.

The pilot was identified as Capt. Arkadiusz Protasiuk, 36, and the co-pilot as Maj. Robert Grzywna, 36. Also on the cockpit crew were Ensign Andrzej Michalak, 36, and Lt. Artur Zietek, 31.

In Warsaw, there was concern that the pilots may have been asked by someone in the plane to land at Smolensk instead of diverting to Minsk or Moscow, in part to avoid missing the commemoration ceremonies.

In Warsaw, Polish Prosecutor General Andrzej Seremet said Polish investigators talked to the flight controller and flight supervisor and "concluded that there were no conditions for landing."

"The tower was advising against the landing," Seremet said.

Polish investigators have not yet listened to the cockpit conversations recorded on the black boxes, but will, to see if there were "any suggestions made to the pilots" from other people aboard the plane.

Polish media reported in August 2008 that pilots flying Kaczynski to Tbilisi refused the president's order to land there because of the country's military conflict with Russia, diverting instead to Azerbaijan.

In remarks shown on Russian television, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov told a government meeting including President Dmitry Medvedev that the data recorders on the plane were found to have been completely functional, which will allow a detailed analysis.

"It is reliably confirmed that warning of the unfavorable weather conditions at the North airport and recommendations to go to a reserve airport were not only transmitted but received by the crew of the plane," he said.

Russian investigators have almost finished reading the flight recorders, said Alexander Bastrykin, Russia's chief investigator.

"The readings confirm that there were no problems with the plane, and that the pilot was informed about the difficult weather conditions, but nevertheless decided to land," Bastrykin said during a briefing with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Smolensk.

Bastrykin said the readings would be double checked, according to footage of the meeting broadcast Monday on Poland's TVN24.

The wreckage, meanwhile, will remain on site through midweek to help speed the investigation, Russian Deputy Transport Minister Igor Levitin said.

Both Russia and Ukraine declared a day of mourning Monday, as Poles struggled to come to terms with the national tragedy that eliminated so many of their government and military leaders.

Tens of thousands watched as Kaczynski's body, returned Sunday to Warsaw, was carried in a coffin by a hearse to the presidential palace, including his twin brother Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the former prime minister.

An annual Holocaust memorial event at Auschwitz-Birkenau on Monday was honoring Kaczynski and the other victims. Organizers of the March of the Living -- with some 10,000 Jewish youth marching over a mile (1.6 kilometers) between the two parts of the former Nazi death camp -- said those marching would also remember Poland's elite killed in Saturday's crash.

Forensics experts from Poland and Russia were working to ID other bodies, including first lady Maria Kaczynska, using DNA testing in many cases.

Jacek Sasin, a spokesman for the Presidential Palace, said Kaczynska's body would be sent to Warsaw, probably Tuesday.

He said the bodies of the first couple would lie in state at the palace from Tuesday, their coffins closed, and the public would be permitted to view them.

"We want every Pole who wants to pay tribute to the president, to be able to come and stand by the coffin," he said.

Sasin that officials are now planning the funeral for Saturday but a final decision depends on when the bodies of all 96 victims are returned home.

Medvedev has said he wants to attend, according to Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski.

Sasin said nothing has been changed in the living quarters of the president and his wife since they were last there for breakfast on Saturday.

"I don't think there is anyone who would want to change anything there. We still cannot believe what has happened," he said. "We all saw them as very warm people, the kind of people that you want to be with, talk to. It is hard to believe that it is over."

Also aboard the Tupelov were the national bank president, the deputy foreign minister, the army chaplain, the head of the National Security Office, the deputy parliament speaker, the Olympic Committee head and at least two presidential aides and 17 lawmakers.

Acting President Bronislaw Komorowski said he was moving to fill the seats in parliament left empty because of the crash.

Meanwhile the Polish zloty was stable on Monday, with little change in its value against the dollar and euro compared to Friday, the day before the plane crash killed the central bank head Slawomir Skrzypek among the dozens of others.

Link