SMOLENSK, Russia/WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland’s President Lech Kaczynski, its central bank head and the country’s military chief were among 97 people killed when their plane crashed in thick fog near a Russian airport yesterday.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk described the crash as “the most tragic event of the country’s post-war history” before flying to the crash site in western Russia where he and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met and laid flowers together.
World leaders expressed shock and sorrow. US President Barack Obama praised Kaczynski’s role in the pro-democracy Solidarity movement that overthrew communism in 1989. Chancellor Angela Merkel said: “Germany will miss Lech Kaczynski”.
Thousands of mourners flocked to the presidential palace in Warsaw and to churches across this staunchly Roman Catholic nation to lay flowers, light candles, sing hymns and pray.
Kaczynski, 60, and his entourage had been heading on board their ageing Tupolev Tu-154 to the nearby Katyn forest to mark the anniversary of the massacre of Polish officers there by Soviet forces in 1940.
Kaczynski’s twin brother and close political ally Jaroslaw, head of Poland’s main opposition party Law and Justice (PiS), also flew to the crash site last evening.
The deaths of President Kaczynski, many of his aides and several opposition lawmakers is a heavy blow to Poland’s body politic, but analysts said they saw no threat to stability in the NATO ally and EU member state and the crash further bolsters Tusk’s domination of the political scene.
“Today in the face of such a drama our nation stays united. There is no division into left and right, differences of views don’t matter. We are together in the face of this tragedy,” parliamentary speaker and now Poland’s acting president, Bronislaw Komorowski, said in a televised address to the nation.
Komorowski said he would set the date of a presidential election which had been due in October after holding talks with Poland’s political parties. Under the constitution the election must now be held by late June.
Komorowski is the presidential candidate of Tusk’s ruling pro-business, pro-euro Civic Platform (PO). Opinion polls suggest he would have defeated Kaczynski in the election.
Pilot error?
The pilot of the plane ignored several orders not to land from air traffic control, the deputy chief of the Russian Air Force’s general staff, Alexander Alyoshin, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
Local officials said the plane had clipped treetops on its way down.
Kaczynski, a combative nationalist often at odds with Tusk’s centrist government and the EU, was a staunch critic of Putin’s Russia. Putin had invited Tusk, not Kaczynski, to ceremonies earlier in the week marking the Katyn massacre anniversary.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev expressed his condolences to the Polish nation in an unprecedented television address. Russia has declared April 12 a day of mourning for the crash.
Poles will hold two minutes of silence at noon (1000 GMT) today. Komorowski has declared a week of mourning in Poland.
Russian television showed the smouldering fuselage and fragments of the plane scattered in a forest. A Reuters reporter saw a broken wing some distance from the rest of the aircraft.
The plane was one of two Tu-154s in the government fleet, both about 20 years old. Government officials had complained about the age of Poland’s official aircraft.
Smolensk regional governor Sergei Antufyev said there were no survivors of the crash. The Emergencies Ministry said the bodies of the victims would be transported to Moscow for investigation.
“The pilot was advised to fly to Moscow or Minsk because of heavy fog, but he still decided to land. No one should have been landing in that fog,” one Russian official told Reuters, on condition his name was not published.
Polish Justice Minister Krzysztof Kwiatkowski said Warsaw planned an inquiry into the crash. Medvedev said Russian investigators would cooperate with the Polish side.
Central bank continuity
Kaczynski, was a one-time ally of Solidarity hero Lech Walesa and a co-founder of the right-wing PiS with his brother. He resigned from the party when he became president in 2005 but continued to support it.
While the president’s role is largely symbolic, the holder can veto government legislation. Kaczynski had infuriated Tusk’s government several times by blocking legislation including health sector reform.
Among the other casualties of the crash were Kaczynski’s wife Maria, along with Slawomir Skrzypek, 47, who had been central bank governor since 2007, the chief of Poland’s military Franciszek Gagor and Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer.
Analysts said Polish markets would not be severely jolted. “Although tragic, we do not believe that this event threatens political and financial stability in Poland in any fundamental way,” Goldman Sachs said in a research note.
Some relatives of victims of the Katyn massacres also were on board, said a Polish government official in Smolensk.
“I’m all broken up … it cannot be expressed in words,” said Ewa Robaczewska, a mourner outside the presidential palace.
