Russia to let Polish officials view wreckage of 2010 plane crash





Russia is to grant Polish officials access to the wreckage of a Polish plane that crashed in Russia in 2010, killing then Polish president Lech Kaczyński and 95 other people on board, Russia's Investigative Committee said on Wednesday.

Poland commemorated the ninth anniversary of Smolensk crash "We need to build... czytaj dalej » In a statement, the Investigative Committee, a state body, said it was granting the access at the end of May in response to a request from Poland.

The crash near Smolensk in western Russia killed the Polish President Lech Kaczyński and his wife, as well as the central bank chief, top army commanders and several lawmakers.

An inquiry by the previous government returned a verdict of pilot error, but the ruling right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party led by Kaczyński's twin brother Jarosław, has said the crash may have been caused by an explosion on board.

The Law and Justice party's chief electoral promise in 2015 was to bring the wreckage of the plane to Poland, claiming that such move would be necessary to discover the whole truth about the 2010 tragedy.

Russia has so far refused to return the wreckage of the jet to Poland, a member of NATO and the European Union, citing its own continuing investigation.

The previous Polish government's report indicated that Smolensk traffic controllers unintentionally contributed to the crash, charges Moscow had dismissed as false. A Russian report into the crash puts the blame squarely on the Poles.

Court orders Lech Wałęsa to apologise to Jarosław Kaczyński for adverse comments Former President... czytaj dalej » In September 2018, Polish prosecutors and forensic experts went to Smolensk and inspected the wreckage of TU-154M, looking closely into structure elements.

The crash was the worst such disaster in Poland since World War Two and left society deeply divided over its causes.

A transcript of conversations from the plane's cockpit leaked by Polish media in 2015 showed that members of the president's entourage urged the pilots to land despite heavy fog.

But many Poles were shocked with video footage showing Russian workers pushing around large parts of the wreckage with excavators, cutting cables and carelessly throwing smaller pieces into a heap on a truck.

The crash took place as pilots attempted to land a Soviet-made TU-154 at a rarely used airport near Smolensk to take part in commemorations of 22,000 Polish officers executed there by Soviet secret police in 1940.