Plane goes down in Russia en route to commemoration of Stalin’s victims (1).
Polish President Lech Kaczynski and some of the country’s highest military and civilian leaders died when the presidential plane crashed as it came in for a landing in thick fog in western Russia on Saturday, killing 96, officials said.
Russian and Polish officials said there were no survivors on the Soviet-era Tupolev, which was taking the president, his wife and staff to events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.
The Army chief of staff, Gen. Franciszek Gagor, National Bank President Slawomir Skrzypek and Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer were also on board, the Polish foreign ministry said.
Russia’s Emergency Ministry said there were 96 dead, 88 part of a Polish state delegation. Poland’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Piotr Paszkowski, said there were 89 people on the passenger list but one person had not shown up.
Earlier, several reports had put the death toll at 132. There was no explanation for the change.
“We still cannot fully understand the scope of this tragedy and what it means for us in the future. Nothing like this has ever happened in Poland,” Paszkowski said. “We can assume with great certainty that all persons on board have been killed.”
The governor of the Smolensk region, where the crash took place about 11 a.m. (3 a.m. ET), also said no one survived.
(1) His plane crashed on route to Katyn where he was due to commemorate the murder 70 years ago of thousands of Polish officers, according to the Polish foreign ministry. To this day however this massacre is blamed on the Germans. But the reality is in 1943 the Nazis exhumed the Polish dead, notified the International Red Cross, and blamed the Soviets. In 1944, having retaken the Katyn area from the Nazis, the Soviets exhumed the Polish dead again and blamed the Nazis. The rest of the world took its usual side according to the propaganda of the day.