Nation mourns Polish leader after riddle of Russian crash

MANY mourners were in tears as they gathered with lighted candles outside Poland's presidential palace last night.

• Lech Kaczynski carrying his granddaughter Eva.

Crowds formed in central Warsaw to pay tribute to the country's president and many top dignitaries, who died in a plane crash in Russia.

As the nation struggled to come to terms with the loss of 97 people, speculation was mounting over what caused the tragedy.

Air traffic controllers in Russia and neighbouring Belarus said they had advised the pilot not to land in such poor conditions.

"But the crew made an independent decision to land in Smolensk," a spokesman for the regional government said.

Polish television reminded viewers that one of the pilots of the presidential jet had been disciplined in 2008 for refusing orders from President Lech Kaczynski to land in Tbilisi during a visit to the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

Kaczynski and his wife Maria were among the passengers killed when the Tupolev jet hit trees as it tried to land in thick fog. The 60-year-old statesman had been leading a delegation to a ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the murder of thousands of Poles on the orders of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

Kaczynski, a nationalist who was deeply suspicious of Russia, was making the trip to the site of the notorious 1940 Katyn massacre just as relations between the two countries were beginning to recover.

His 20-year-old, recently refurbished presidential jet broke up in woods just over half a mile short of a recently decommissioned Russian air force base near the western city of Smolensk.

Eyewitnesses said the plane crashed as it made its fourth attempt to land at Severny aerodrome in visibility of only 500 yards. One local described seeing the plane come through the fog, leaning heavily to the left before hitting a tree and exploding. Another talked of hearing the aircraft's three engines rev up shortly before it crashed, as if it were trying to gain height again.

The president and his delegation had been running late for the Katyn ceremony.

Russian investigators said it was too early to say what had caused the crash, but they would focus on three possible reasons: bad weather, pilot error and technical fault.

President Dmitry Medvedev appointed his prime minister, Vladimir Putin, to oversee the investigation. Putin immediately flew to Smolensk, where he was scheduled to meet Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, who was Kaczynski's political arch-enemy.

The two PMs – both believed to be as powerful as their presidents, if not more so – will be eager to make sure the tragedy does nothing to extend decades of animosity between their nations.

Tusk, a pro-Europe figure who has tried to repair Poland's relations with neighbours Russia and Germany, expressed his "deepest sympathy" to Kaczynski's family and said: "The contemporary world has not seen such a tragedy."

Tusk said condolences were pouring in from around the world and noted that "the first came from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev".

A clearly upset Medvedev made a televised address, saying the Smolensk tragedy was "unprecedented" and ordering a national day of mourning in Russia tomorrow.

Poland is to mourn for seven days. Along with Kaczynski, it lost some of its most important public figures. Russian authorities said 88 of those who died on the plane were members of the government delegation. Eight crew lost their lives. There were no survivors.

The dead included the army chief of staff, national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers. Most were associated with the deeply conservative Law and Justice party set up by Kaczynski and his twin brother Jaroslaw, the former premier who currently leads the opposition to Tusk in the Polish parliament.

Among the victims was one of the heroes of modern Poland, Anna Walentynowicz, whose sacking in August 1980 from the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk sparked a workers' strike that spurred the eventual creation of the Solidarity movement.

Also killed was Ryszard Kaczorowski, 90, a survivor of Stalin's NKVD secret police who fought with the British at Monte Cassino in the Second World War before settling in London. Kaczorowski, who became the last president of Poland's Cold War-era government in exile, had been persecuted by the Soviets after their 1939 invasion of Poland because of his role in the scouting movement.

Bronislaw Gostomski, 62, a priest at St Andrew Bobola Roman Catholic Church in Shepherd's Bush, west London, died in the plane crash. Hundreds of mourners packed into St Andrew Bobola church to attend mass yesterday.

Those attending described Monsignor Gostomski as a "great" man. Dignitaries including the Polish ambassador Barbara Tuge-Erecinska took part in the service, along with a group of scouts and guides who led the congregation out of the building.

In Warsaw, Martin O'Reilly, a Scot who lives close to the presidential palace, said: "People are completely devastated. Nobody can talk about anything else."

Prime Minister Gordon Brown was among world leaders paying tribute to Kaczynski, especially for his role in the Solidarity movement. Breaking off from electioneering in Fife, he said Kaczynski had been one of the "defining actors of modern Polish history".

Kaczynski's jet – the same as that used by several heads of state, including China's – had just undergone a massive overhaul in Russia. Investigators have found its black box.

The massacre that poisoned neighbours' relations

IT WAS Stalin's worst crime, his Auschwitz. For half a century Soviet authorities lied about the murder of nearly 22,000 Poles buried in the woods of Katyn, western Russia, in 1940. President Lech Kaczynski was to have attended a memorial for the victims.

They said the crime was committed by the Nazis. In fact, the Poles, many army officers, were shot by the Communist dictator's secret police, the NKVD. His signature was on their death warrant.

The killings took place less than a year after the Soviet Union, under a pact with Hitler, invaded Poland. Most historians see the murders as a bid to decapitate eastern Poland's ruling class, to wipe out the human vestiges of the "bourgeois" Polish state.

Soviet executioners, who lacked the murderous efficiency of the Nazis, shot the Poles one by one, usually with a pistol in the back of the head. One NKVD officer, dressed in a leather butcher's apron, killed 7,000. Later, like many others, he took his own life.

Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev admitted responsibility for Katyn in 1990. But the murders still poison relations between Russia and Poland. Only this month have some of the wounds begun to heal. Russian TV premiered a Polish movie about Katyn. And the leaders of the two Slavic nations have, together, mourned Stalin's victims.

Russia has never formally apologised for the murders but its current prime minister, Vladimir Putin, has come very close to doing so. Last week Putin became the first senior Russian politician to attend a memorial ceremony at Katyn. "This crime cannot be justified in any way," he said. "Forgetting would be duplicitous. We are committed to preserving the memory."

Putin's presence was seen as a gesture of goodwill towards Poland. Kaczynski, who has made no secret of his dislike of Putin and Russia, was not invited. Putin, as prime minister, had asked his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, who is much more friendly to Russia. Putin and Tusk know more than history is at stake. Russia and Poland can't ignore the importance of their economic ties.