Polish president Kaczynski and head of National Bank +more killed in plane crash
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- Start date
President likely killed in plane crash
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/04/10/poland.president.plane.crash/
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
"It's probably that all people on board were killed," said Piotr Paszkowski.
The plane was approaching the airport at Smolensk, Russia, and probably hit some trees at the end of the runway, Paszkowski said.
"It caught fire, the fire has now been extinguished, but the extent of the damage is such that it's unlikely anybody on board survived," he said.
Kaczynski was 60.
Pictures from the scene showed parts of the airplane charred and strewn through a wooded area. Some pieces, including one of the wheel wells, were upside-down.
The crash happened around 10:50 a.m. (2:50 a.m. ET) on the outskirts of the town of Pechorsk in the Smolensk region, the Investigation Committee of the Russian prosecutor's office said in a written statement on its Web site.
The Tupolev-154 was carrying a total of 132 and was landing in heavy fog, the committee said.
The chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe expressed his condolences after the crash.
"I offer my deepest condolences to the Polish people and to the families of those killed in this tragic accident. Our hearts go out to you in this difficult time," said Kanat Saudabayev, who is also the secretary of state and foreign minister of Kazakhstan.
CNN's Melissa Gray in London, England, contributed to this report.
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lol no it was not obama
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/04/10/poland.president.plane.crash/
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Polish President Lech Kaczynski feared killed in plane crash in western Russia
- Plane was approaching the airport at Smolensk, Russia, believed to have hit trees
- Pictures from the scene showed parts of the airplane charred and strewn through a wooded area
"It's probably that all people on board were killed," said Piotr Paszkowski.
The plane was approaching the airport at Smolensk, Russia, and probably hit some trees at the end of the runway, Paszkowski said.
"It caught fire, the fire has now been extinguished, but the extent of the damage is such that it's unlikely anybody on board survived," he said.
Kaczynski was 60.
Pictures from the scene showed parts of the airplane charred and strewn through a wooded area. Some pieces, including one of the wheel wells, were upside-down.
The crash happened around 10:50 a.m. (2:50 a.m. ET) on the outskirts of the town of Pechorsk in the Smolensk region, the Investigation Committee of the Russian prosecutor's office said in a written statement on its Web site.
The Tupolev-154 was carrying a total of 132 and was landing in heavy fog, the committee said.
The chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe expressed his condolences after the crash.
"I offer my deepest condolences to the Polish people and to the families of those killed in this tragic accident. Our hearts go out to you in this difficult time," said Kanat Saudabayev, who is also the secretary of state and foreign minister of Kazakhstan.
CNN's Melissa Gray in London, England, contributed to this report.
------------------------------
lol no it was not obama
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8612825.stm
Polish President Lech Kaczynski 'in plane crash'
Footage from the scene shows firefighters at work amid the wreckage
Polish President Lech Kaczynski and scores of others are believed to have been killed in a plane crash in Russia. Officials in the Smolensk region said no-one had survived after the plane apparently hit trees as it came in for landing in thick fog.
Several other government figures, including the army chief of staff, were also thought to have been on board.
They were in Russia to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, when the Soviets killed thousands of Poles.
The BBC's Adam Easton in Warsaw says the crash is a catastrophe for the Polish people.
He says Prime Minister Donald Tusk was reportedly in tears when he was told.
Plane 'hit trees'
The Russian emergencies ministry told Itar-Tass news agency the plane crashed at 1056 Moscow time (0656 GMT).
Profile: Lech Kaczynski
In pictures: Plane crash
Your reaction
Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said it had been flying from Moscow to Smolensk, but had no details on the identities of those killed.
Smolensk regional governor Sergei Antufiev told Russian TV that no-one had survived.
"As it was preparing for landing, the Polish president's aircraft did not make it to the landing strip," he said.
"According to preliminary reports, it got caught up in the tops of trees, fell to the ground and broke up into pieces. There are no survivors in that crash.
"We are clarifying how many people there were in the [Polish] delegation. According to preliminary reports, 85 members of the delegation and the crew."
Russian investigators said there were a total of 132 people on the plane.
Controversial figure
The president was flying in a Tupolev 154, a plane that was designed in the 1960s and capable of carrying more than 100 passengers.
Our correspondent says there had been calls for Polish leaders to upgrade their planes.
As well as the president and his wife, Maria, a number of senior officials were also said to be on the passenger list.
They included the army chief of staff Gen Franciszek Gagor, central bank governor Slawomir Skrzypek and deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer.
Mr Kaczynski has been a controversial figure in Polish politics, advocating a right-wing Catholic agenda.
He has opposed rapid free-market reforms and favoured retaining social welfare programmes.
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i smell bullshit, people this powerful arent going to accidentally crash. i just hope the us doesnt get dragged into this bull shit
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8612825.stm
Polish President Lech Kaczynski 'in plane crash'
Footage from the scene shows firefighters at work amid the wreckage
Polish President Lech Kaczynski and scores of others are believed to have been killed in a plane crash in Russia. Officials in the Smolensk region said no-one had survived after the plane apparently hit trees as it came in for landing in thick fog.
Several other government figures, including the army chief of staff, were also thought to have been on board.
They were in Russia to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, when the Soviets killed thousands of Poles.
The BBC's Adam Easton in Warsaw says the crash is a catastrophe for the Polish people.
He says Prime Minister Donald Tusk was reportedly in tears when he was told.
Plane 'hit trees'
The Russian emergencies ministry told Itar-Tass news agency the plane crashed at 1056 Moscow time (0656 GMT).
Profile: Lech Kaczynski
In pictures: Plane crash
Your reaction
Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said it had been flying from Moscow to Smolensk, but had no details on the identities of those killed.
Smolensk regional governor Sergei Antufiev told Russian TV that no-one had survived.
"As it was preparing for landing, the Polish president's aircraft did not make it to the landing strip," he said.
"According to preliminary reports, it got caught up in the tops of trees, fell to the ground and broke up into pieces. There are no survivors in that crash.
"We are clarifying how many people there were in the [Polish] delegation. According to preliminary reports, 85 members of the delegation and the crew."
Russian investigators said there were a total of 132 people on the plane.
Controversial figure
The president was flying in a Tupolev 154, a plane that was designed in the 1960s and capable of carrying more than 100 passengers.
Our correspondent says there had been calls for Polish leaders to upgrade their planes.
As well as the president and his wife, Maria, a number of senior officials were also said to be on the passenger list.
They included the army chief of staff Gen Franciszek Gagor, central bank governor Slawomir Skrzypek and deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer.
Mr Kaczynski has been a controversial figure in Polish politics, advocating a right-wing Catholic agenda.
He has opposed rapid free-market reforms and favoured retaining social welfare programmes.
---------------------------------
i smell bullshit, people this powerful arent going to accidentally crash. i just hope the us doesnt get dragged into this bull shit
wtf thast the second time i did that tonight. oh well.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/world/europe/11poland.html
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MOSCOW — A plane carrying the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, his wife and other high-ranking officials crashed in a heavy fog in western Russia on Saturday morning, killing all aboard, Polish officials said.
Related
Michal Cizek/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Lech Kaczynski.
Russian television showed chunks of still-flaming fuselage scattered in a bare forest near Smolensk, where the president was arriving for a ceremony commemorating the murder of more than 20,000 Polish officers by the Red Army as it invaded Poland.
The governor of Smolensk region, Sergei Antufiyev, said early reports suggest the plane, landing in a thick fog, did not reach the runway but instead hit the treetops and fell apart. Russian president Dmitri A. Medvedev ordered top officials to rush to the scene and opened an investigation into the causes of the crash.
The crash came as a stunning blow to Poland, killing many of the country’s top leaders and reviving, for some, the horror of the Katyn massacre.
“It is a damned place,” former president Aleksander Kwas’niewski told TVN24. “It sends shivers down my spine. First the flower of the Second Polish Republic is murdered in the forests around Smolensk, now the intellectual elite of the Third Polish Republic die in this tragic plane crash when approaching Smolensk airport.”
“This is a wound which will be very difficult to heal,” he said.
Former president Lech Walesa, who presided over Poland’s transition from communism, cast the crash in similar historic terms.“This is the second disaster after Katyn,” he told the news channel TVN-24. “They wanted to cut off our head there, and here the flower of our nation has also perished. Regardless of the differences, the intellectual class of those on the plane was truly great.”
The plane was a Tupolev Tu-154, designed by the Soviets in the mid-1960s, and officials had long complained about the country’s aging air fleet. Former prime minister Leszek Miller, who survived a helicopter crash in 2003, told a Polish news network he had long predicted such a disaster.
“I once said that we will one day meet in a funeral procession, and that is when we will take the decision to replace the aircraft fleet,” he said.
Among those on board the plane were Mr. Kaczynski; his wife, Maria; former Polish president Ryszard Kaczorowski; the deputy speaker of Poland’s parliament, Jerzy Szmajdzin’ski; the head of the president’s chancellery, Wladyslaw Stasiak; and the head of the National Security Bureau, Aleksander Szczygo.
Mr. Kaczynski’s death on Russian soil is another tragic event in the tumultuous relationship between Russia and Poland.
He had been due in western Russia to commemorate the anniversary of the murder of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II.
The ceremonies were to be held at a site in the Katyn forest close to Smolensk, where 70 years ago members of the Soviet secret police executed more than 20,000 Polish officers captured after the Soviet Army invaded Poland in 1939.
The two countries had been making strides in recent months to improve their ties, which had long been strained. Poland was once a Soviet satellite, and has resented dominance by Moscow. After the collapse of Communism, it had embraced the West and snubbed Russia.
The Katyn massacre was one point of tension. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin took a major step to address improve relations by becoming the first Russian or Soviet leader to join Polish officials in commemorating the anniversary. He was joined there by Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister.
Mr. Tusk was not on the plane that crashed on Saturday morning.
Vladimir V. Putin was the first Russian or Soviet leader to jointly commemorate it with his Polish counterpart.
He cast the executions as one of many crimes carried out by the “totalitarian regime” of the Soviet Union.
“We bow our heads to those who bravely met death here,” he said at a ceremony on Wednesday. “In this ground lay Soviet citizens, burnt in the fire of the Stalinist repression of the 1930s; Polish officers, shot on secret orders; soldiers of the Red Army, executed by the Nazis.”
Michal Piotrowsky contributed reporting from Warsaw and Clifford J. Levy from Moscow.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/world/europe/11poland.html
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MOSCOW — A plane carrying the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, his wife and other high-ranking officials crashed in a heavy fog in western Russia on Saturday morning, killing all aboard, Polish officials said.
Related
- Putin Marks Soviet Massacre of Polish Officers (April 8, 2010)
Michal Cizek/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Lech Kaczynski.
Russian television showed chunks of still-flaming fuselage scattered in a bare forest near Smolensk, where the president was arriving for a ceremony commemorating the murder of more than 20,000 Polish officers by the Red Army as it invaded Poland.
The governor of Smolensk region, Sergei Antufiyev, said early reports suggest the plane, landing in a thick fog, did not reach the runway but instead hit the treetops and fell apart. Russian president Dmitri A. Medvedev ordered top officials to rush to the scene and opened an investigation into the causes of the crash.
The crash came as a stunning blow to Poland, killing many of the country’s top leaders and reviving, for some, the horror of the Katyn massacre.
“It is a damned place,” former president Aleksander Kwas’niewski told TVN24. “It sends shivers down my spine. First the flower of the Second Polish Republic is murdered in the forests around Smolensk, now the intellectual elite of the Third Polish Republic die in this tragic plane crash when approaching Smolensk airport.”
“This is a wound which will be very difficult to heal,” he said.
Former president Lech Walesa, who presided over Poland’s transition from communism, cast the crash in similar historic terms.“This is the second disaster after Katyn,” he told the news channel TVN-24. “They wanted to cut off our head there, and here the flower of our nation has also perished. Regardless of the differences, the intellectual class of those on the plane was truly great.”
The plane was a Tupolev Tu-154, designed by the Soviets in the mid-1960s, and officials had long complained about the country’s aging air fleet. Former prime minister Leszek Miller, who survived a helicopter crash in 2003, told a Polish news network he had long predicted such a disaster.
“I once said that we will one day meet in a funeral procession, and that is when we will take the decision to replace the aircraft fleet,” he said.
Among those on board the plane were Mr. Kaczynski; his wife, Maria; former Polish president Ryszard Kaczorowski; the deputy speaker of Poland’s parliament, Jerzy Szmajdzin’ski; the head of the president’s chancellery, Wladyslaw Stasiak; and the head of the National Security Bureau, Aleksander Szczygo.
Mr. Kaczynski’s death on Russian soil is another tragic event in the tumultuous relationship between Russia and Poland.
He had been due in western Russia to commemorate the anniversary of the murder of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II.
The ceremonies were to be held at a site in the Katyn forest close to Smolensk, where 70 years ago members of the Soviet secret police executed more than 20,000 Polish officers captured after the Soviet Army invaded Poland in 1939.
The two countries had been making strides in recent months to improve their ties, which had long been strained. Poland was once a Soviet satellite, and has resented dominance by Moscow. After the collapse of Communism, it had embraced the West and snubbed Russia.
The Katyn massacre was one point of tension. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin took a major step to address improve relations by becoming the first Russian or Soviet leader to join Polish officials in commemorating the anniversary. He was joined there by Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister.
Mr. Tusk was not on the plane that crashed on Saturday morning.
Vladimir V. Putin was the first Russian or Soviet leader to jointly commemorate it with his Polish counterpart.
He cast the executions as one of many crimes carried out by the “totalitarian regime” of the Soviet Union.
“We bow our heads to those who bravely met death here,” he said at a ceremony on Wednesday. “In this ground lay Soviet citizens, burnt in the fire of the Stalinist repression of the 1930s; Polish officers, shot on secret orders; soldiers of the Red Army, executed by the Nazis.”
Michal Piotrowsky contributed reporting from Warsaw and Clifford J. Levy from Moscow.
some of the deceased:
Lech Kaczyński, the President of Poland
Maria Kaczyńska, the first lady
Ryszard Kaczorowski, the last President of the Polish government-in-exile
Jerzy Szmajdziński, Deputy Speaker of the Sejm
Władysław Stasiak, Chief of the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland
Aleksander Szczygło, head of the National Security Bureau
Paweł Wypych, Secretary of State in the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland
Mariusz Handzlik, Undersecretary of State in the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland
Andrzej Kremer, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs
General Franciszek Gągor, Chief of the Polish Army General Staff
Andrzej Przewoźnik, Secretary-General of Rada Ochrony Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa
Grzegorz Dolniak, member of the Sejm
Przemysław Gosiewski, member of the Sejm
Zbigniew Wassermann, member of the Sejm
Janusz Kochanowski, Polish Ombudsman
Sławomir Skrzypek, President of the National Bank of Poland
Janusz Kurtyka, Historian and president of the Institute of National Remembrance
Bishop Tadeusz Płoski, Polish Military Bishop (2004)
Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka, member of the Sejm
lots of top Polish officials dead............
Lech Kaczyński, the President of Poland
Maria Kaczyńska, the first lady
Ryszard Kaczorowski, the last President of the Polish government-in-exile
Jerzy Szmajdziński, Deputy Speaker of the Sejm
Władysław Stasiak, Chief of the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland
Aleksander Szczygło, head of the National Security Bureau
Paweł Wypych, Secretary of State in the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland
Mariusz Handzlik, Undersecretary of State in the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland
Andrzej Kremer, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs
General Franciszek Gągor, Chief of the Polish Army General Staff
Andrzej Przewoźnik, Secretary-General of Rada Ochrony Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa
Grzegorz Dolniak, member of the Sejm
Przemysław Gosiewski, member of the Sejm
Zbigniew Wassermann, member of the Sejm
Janusz Kochanowski, Polish Ombudsman
Sławomir Skrzypek, President of the National Bank of Poland
Janusz Kurtyka, Historian and president of the Institute of National Remembrance
Bishop Tadeusz Płoski, Polish Military Bishop (2004)
Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka, member of the Sejm
lots of top Polish officials dead............
lol putin just hatin on poland cos the u.s got a missile defence base gettin built in poland and russia dont approve cos its so close to them...i think maybe this has something to do with this shit...funny thing is everyone ca have they opinion on shit like this but when it comes to super powers squarin off and cover ups aint shit people like us can do about it
