Polish Defense Minister Resigns Over New Raport On 2010 Presidential Plane Crash

Bogdan Klich

The immense scandal created by the accident in April 2010, when the entire leadership of Poland was killed in an aircraft accident at Smolensk, turns a new page as another Polish report shows that the Russian controllers at the Smolensk airport delivered the Polish pilots incorrect and confusing landing instructions to Polish pilots.

The new report that is attempting to cast a little light on what happened on that terrible day when the then president of Poland, Lech Kaczynsky and 95 highly-ranked officials lost their lives may cause further straining of relations between Russia and Poland, since the Russian commission that investigated the accident said that the pilot did not understand the commands the Russian controllers gave him.

However, the report presented on Friday does place most of the blame on Polish officials and procedures, causing almost immediate resignation of defense minister Bogdan Klich, whose ministry trained the pilots of the crew that was on board that day.

The report the Russian aviation commission issued on January was an attempt to show that the Polish officials were to blame for the accident that happened on a foggy day near Smolensk.

Crash Near Smolensk

The Polish officials rejected that report and launched their own inquiry in the matter, and the report that was issued on Friday cites the Russian report when it shows that one of the key reasons for the crash was that  the pilots were insufficiently trained to fly the Tupolev 154.

It also states that the crew did not react promptly to the automatic terrain warning devise that was telling them they were flying too low.

The report adds that the Russian controllers failed to tell the pilots the exact positioning of the plane, which prevented the pilots from realizing they were going wrong about it.

The Polish interior minister, Jerzy Miller, said that there was not one cause but a group of causes that led to the biggest tragedy in Polish history since the WWII.

In turn, a high Russian official, deputy chairman of Russian Duma, said that Polish pilots were to blame, and accused Poland of wishing to turn the matter into a political scandal.

Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, said Klich submitted his resignation on Thursday evening, knowing that the report would indicate military mistakes in the training of the pilots.

Tusk described the former minister as an honorable man, and said he did not want to become a burden for the party, which is to get engaged in elections this fall, and hopes to remain in power after them.

According to the report, the plane that crashed was piloted by Captain Arkadiusz Protasiuk, 36, who did not have enough experience to pilot Tupolev 154. Protasiuk was the only one to speak Russian and maintain relations with control tower, but was overwhelmed with tasks and could not perform them all.

The Russian report had said that the plane was on the right course when it crashed, but the Polish report says that the plane was flying 60 meters lower than it should have, and that the Russians never told the Polish crew that, causing the plane to touch the tops of the trees and then to crush.

Another reason the crash was produced was that the air strip was not enough illuminated, causing a lack of visibility.

Another thing the Russians said in their January report was that the political officials put pressure on the pilots, alluding that the head of Polish air forces, General Andrzej Blasik, entered the cockpit and pressured the pilots to attempt a dangerous landing.

While confirming that alcohol was found in Blasik’s blood, the Polish report says that there was no indication, in the plane’s black boxes, that he put pressure on pilots.

The report also said that the plane was not actually attempting any landing when they crashed a few hundred meters near the runway.

People Who Died in the Crash

The president of Poland and the high ranked officials of the state were participating in a commemoration at Katyn, where 22,000 Polish officers were executed by the Soviet secret service during the WWII.

The Russian authorities never acknowledged that NKVD actually shot in the head all those Polish officers, until last autumn, when the Duma assumed that the killing was done by the former Soviet Union regime.