Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has visited the crash site where Polish President Lech Kaczynski’s plane plunged to the ground.
Putin was joined at the disaster zone near Smolensk in western Russia by his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk. Kaczynski’s twin brother Jaroslaw has also been at the scene.
Putin has promised to take personal responsibility for the investigation into the causes of the tragedy.
The black box flight recorder has already been recovered. A key question that needs answering is why the pilot attempted to land in thick fog in an aeroplane that was not equipped for such a manoeuvre.
Russian air traffic control has said the pilot ignored repeated instructions to divert to another airport. The plane is believed to have hit trees on the third attempt to land.
In similar poor weather conditions two years ago in Georgia, President Kaczynski himself instructed his pilot to land the plane, overruling danger warnings from Georgian air traffic control.
Poland has declared a week of national mourning after a plane crash Saturday killed 96 people, including Polish President Lech Kaczynski and the first lady, as well as dozens of Poland's senior military, political and religious leaders. While many Poles are still in a state of shock, they're also asking questions about the government's fleet of aging aircraft.
Late into the evening Saturday night and Sunday, thousands of Poles continued to walk through the square in front of the president's residence. They lay bouquets of flowers, lit candles or just stood quietly, staring at the Polish flag fluttering at half-staff above the presidential palace.
The loss is devastating to Poland; in addition to the president and first lady, the rest of the dead include the head of the Polish central bank, the deputy foreign minister, the national security adviser; the deputy parliament speaker and several members of parliament, including two presidential candidates.
The military faced equally horrific loses: the heads of the Polish navy, air force, special forces, ground forces and the army chief of staff were all killed.
Slawka Spurek says she was stunned when she heard. Spurek is visiting Warsaw from a nearby town for the weekend, and was enjoying a museum with her family when a guard told her the news.
"The lady said, 'Have you heard our president is dead?' — and it was a shock. We still can't believe it. There are so many people under the presidential palace here in Warsaw, and so many candles," Spurek says. "There's an endless river of people, and I can't believe this."
President Kaczynski and the other VIPs were traveling to western Russia when their plane crashed in heavy fog while trying to land at an airport in Smolensk. TV footage showed the smoldering, twisted wreckage of the Polish presidential jet, a Russian-made Tupolev-154, spread across a wooded area more than a mile from the airport.
Warsaw resident Alex Martin calls it Poland's biggest tragedy in its post-World War II history. "[We're] left without any commanders of the army and the president of the national bank, so it was really disaster for the country and the people."
The parliament speaker is now acting president, and the country will hold presidential elections sometime in June.
The pain of the loss is compounded by the fact that the president and his entourage were on their way to remember the 70th anniversary of a massacre in the forests of Katyn of thousands of Polish military officers and Polish intelligentsia by the Soviet secret police during World War II.
Poles are now calling the plane crash the "second Katyn," and refer to the forests around the Russian town as "cursed," "haunted" and "damned."
There are already conspiracy theories circulating.
One man standing in front of the presidential palace held a sign that said "the inhuman murderers have done it again," referring to Russia.
But investigators so far believe the accident was most likely the result of pilot error. Russian media report that the Polish pilot was warned several times by air traffic controllers to divert to another airport because of the dangerous fog conditions. Professor Wawrzyniec Konarski with the Warsaw School of Social Sciences says that despite the grief and sadness, Poles are asking tough questions.
"It has to be clarified why the plane, the staff, decided to land despite the fact that the fog was so strong," says Konarski. "If it was really true that the airport warned them or not, to what extent were they aware that it was so dangerous to land the plane? All of those things have to be clarified to avoid any further conspiracy theories."
Poles are also asking why so many VIPs were on one aircraft, and why the Polish government had not upgraded its fleet of aging aircraft.
President Kaczynski had been one of the leaders of the pro-democracy Solidarity movement that helped Poland overthrow the communist regime. His friend Lech Walesa, the dissident who went on to become president, said simply of the crash, "the elite of our country has perished."
A plane carrying President Lech Kaczynski crashed in Russia Saturday, killing him, his wife, and many top officials. Aviation expert Clive Irving on why they never should have been on that aircraft.
What were they thinking? Poland is in deep mourning for its president and many of the country’s political and cultural elite who died Saturday in the crash of a Soviet-era jet, the Tu-154, on approach to Smolensk in western Russia.
It’s astonishing that they were flying in a plane as old as a Tupolev-154. In the airline food chain, the Tu-154 is more likely to be found in Africa flying for a non-regulated and nameless carrier on arms-running or drug missions.
In 2003, the then-Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller was lucky to survive crashing in an even older Soviet design, the Mi-8 helicopter that he was using. Today, Miller told the Polish media, “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.”
Inescapably, Saturday’s national tragedy is invested with the dark and still traumatic memories of the event that caused President Lech Kaczynski to be flying into Russia, the massacre 70 years ago of 20,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest. This deliberate atrocity was ordered by Stalin, but for decades the Soviets claimed that it had been carried out by the Nazis. The Polish presidential entourage’s visit was part of a renewed attempt by Russia and Poland to reconcile both nations to the truth and move on.
Katyn, said former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, “is a damned place. It sends shivers down my spine.”
And now, just as Katyn decapitated Poland’s military elite, the crash has decapitated its contemporary leadership in many fields. As the country's most famous former president, Lech Walesa, put it: “They wanted to cut off our head there [at Katyn], and here the flower of our nation has perished.”
Why does it seem so reckless to assign an obsolete airplane to such a prominent mission? The age of the airframe itself is not the problem. The Tupolev is a 1972 design and, as many Russian airplanes of the day were, it is a copy of an American model, the Boeing 727 which, for many decades, was the workhorse of U.S. domestic routes until it was replaced by the Boeing 757 and other new generations of airliners like the Airbus A320.
In those days, Russian airliners were built to be tough and rugged to fly to distant provinces of the Soviet Union in often appalling weather where the airports were often basic and without sophisticated navigation aids. (I remember landing at Moscow in a 154 in the middle of a blizzard and hitting the tarmac with a huge thump. Later the pilot told us that that was standard technique to get a grip on the snow. It didn’t help to see the burned out carcass of a less lucky airliner still lying beyond the end of the runway.) And to that extent the 154, a hands-on plane for skilled pilots, had a good safety record. Only 28 have been lost of the 1,000 or so built in 40 years of service—given the world accident rates over that period, a respectable record.
Aeroflot, the Russian carrier, finally retired its 154s this year, by which time they truly qualified as old bangers. The most pressing reason to dump them for Aeroflot was not simply safety but fuel costs. The 154’s engines were gas guzzlers, noisy and dirty, another sign of how far behind in technology the plane had become. Aeroflot now flies Boeings and Airbuses.
Of course, it is far too soon to judge what caused the crash today in Smolensk. But the circumstances have all the characteristics of the kind of accident that has been virtually eliminated where current aviation technology exists—an approach in thick fog, a plane lacking contemporary avionics to give the pilots an absolutely flawless glide path to touch down in zero visibility, and an airport without the ground equipment that matches those avionics.
The pilots, no matter how skilled, would have been in a situation that no pilot ever wants to be in these days: controlling the approach manually with the engine throttles, flying on instruments all the way until they touched the tarmac. In other words, it’s a very last-century kind of crash.
BBC News reports that Russian media are claiming that the pilots were advised to divert to another airport but chose to persist with the approach to Smolensk. The 154 was being flown by the Polish air force. There are also reports that this same airplane had developed problems during a 2008 flight to Mongolia by President Kaczynski.
Western nations, as a rule, take care that their leaders and VIPs fly either state-of-the-art military transports or commercial airliners of the same standard. The U.S. is the only nation that provides its president with an airplane as sophisticated as the Boeing 747s that operate as Air Force One and Two.
The last time any U.S. official died on a political mission was in April 1996 when Commerce Secretary Ron Brown was killed—along with many of his department’s top people and U.S. business leaders—in Croatia. Their CT-43, the military version of the Boeing 737, crashed into a mountainside on approach to Dubrovnik. The Air Force blamed the pilots for faulty navigation.
President Lech Kaczynski and all the other more than 80 VIPs who boarded the 154 were in a needless risk situation. Given the weather conditions, they should never have been cleared to fly in such an airplane.
He died en route to the most sensitive mission possible — a visit to the place that has driven a wedge between Poles and Russians for three generations.
The death of Lech Kaczynski, Poland's president and dozens of his high-level countrymen in a plane crash, and the purpose behind the journey, laid bare the deep divisions that remain between two nations still struggling to be more than uneasy neighbors who watch each other with skepticism and suspicion.
Saturday's planned visit to the Katyn forest was somber in purpose but underscored his suspicious eye of the massive neighbor and former taskmaster to the east. The memorial service was to mark the 70th anniversary of the killing of thousands of Polish officers and intellectuals by the Soviet secret security during World War II.
Katyn. The site of the massacre of Polish military officers, priests, shopkeepers. Men shot in the back of the head by Josef Stalin's NKVD, the precursor of the KGB.
"It is an accursed place," former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski told TVN24 after the crash.
'An event Moscow would like to forget' Janusz Bugajski of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that Saturday's crash has put Katyn at the center of Polish-Russian relations.
"It brought to the forefront again an event that Moscow would like to forget or, if not to forget, to sideline," he said, noting that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took a significant step by attending the Katyn commemorations last Wednesday with Polish counterpart Donald Tusk.
The ancient city of Smolensk has long played a significant and somewhat symbolic role in Russian-Polish relations.
Russian and Polish rulers fiercely fought over it for centuries, as well as over other contested territories in today's Ukraine and Belarus, and the Russian takeover of the city in the mid-17th century preceded Moscow's takeover of eastern Polish lands.
Earlier this week, Poles took deep satisfaction in Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's presence at the memorial for the 22,000 killed there.
Putin was the first Russian leader to commemorate the Katyn massacres with a Polish leader and noted that both nations' "fates had been inexorably joined" by the atrocities that saw 22,000 Polish officers, prisoners and intellectuals massacred by Stalin's secret police in 1940 in and around Katyn, a village near Russia's border with Belarus.
"In our country there has been a clear political, legal and moral judgment made of the evil acts of this totalitarian regime, and this judgment cannot be revised," he said, but he did not apologize or call it a war crime.
Listening to the remarks was the Polish prime minister, Tusk, not Kaczynski who, as president, was not invited to the event.
"It was a step forward. He could have not shown up, he could have not invited Tusk," Bugajski said.
Instead Kaczynski, along with others, made their own trip Saturday for Polish-only commemorations.
"I think in a way this is a God-given opportunity to really talk honestly about Katyn and what led to Katyn," Bugajski said. "We know who killed these people."
For half a century, Soviet officials claimed that the mass executions had been carried out by Nazi occupiers during the Second World War. But the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev's rule admitted in 1990 that the crimes had been committed by Stalin's NKVD secret police.
"Without a doubt, there is evident symbolism in this tragedy that we cannot even grasp now," Slawomir Debski, the head of Poland's Institute of International Affairs, said. "At a time when it seemed we were reaching a conclusion of the Katyn issue between Poland and Russia, after the ceremonies and good gestures, we have another tragedy."
Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, said Kaczynski's death could fuel anti-Russian sentiments among some Poles.
"There will be certain people who'll say 'It was Russians who organized the whole thing,'" Lukyanov was quoted by the gazeta.ru news portal as saying.
He said only an open investigation by the Russian authorities could put to rest any suspicion but there was optimism, too.
"But we may also look for a grain of hope in that it can mend our relations because it is such a tragedy that we may see a kind of catharsis," Anna Materska-Sosnowska, a political scientist with Warsaw University.
Moving in different directions
Russia and Poland have always kept a wary eye on each other. Poland, after communism's collapse, eagerly embraced the west, joining the European Union and NATO, partly to anchor itself in Europe and give itself a security blanket against Russia.
Now Katyn, which has long divided the two countries, could further erode already testy national relations or, analysts said Saturday, could provide the chance for them to move forward and extend hands.
"We cannot understand why people representing the Polish state died at the same place where thousands of Poland's officers had been murdered," Debski said. "Apparently this soil must like Polish blood."
MOSCOW - For two days, President Barack Obama pressed the reset button with Russia.
The results: He ended up getting the expected agreement on deep cuts in nuclear arsenals, but he is leaving Moscow with few assurances of Kremlin help in solving other issues key to his foreign policy agenda.
He is also leaving behind a spark he hopes will blaze to life and thaw U.S. relations with a former superpower with a chip on its shoulder. But his two days of summitry produced no unexpected breakthroughs.
Throughout the meetings and speeches, Obama stayed on message: The United States and Russia have too many overlapping interests to move through the coming decades at odds. The time for confrontational Cold War thinking is well-past. America wants Russia to be "strong, peaceful and prosperous."
He told the graduating class at Moscow's New Economic School that the United States and Russia were not "destined to be antagonists," but he predicted — nevertheless — hard bargaining as the two nations work to overcome a long history of estrangement.
"It is difficult to forge a lasting partnership between former adversaries. But I believe on the fundamental issues that will shape this century, Americans and Russians share common interests that form a basis for cooperation," he said.
No give:
On several issues key to Obama foreign policy, the Russians were unbending, at least for now.
_While they agreed to join the U.S. in reassessing the threat from Iran's nuclear ambitions, there was no hoped-for Kremlin offer of direct intervention with Tehran. The Russians make significant profits from arms sales to Iran and the construction a nuclear complex for electricity generation.
_On the flash point issue of Georgia, where the Russian army crushed the tiny country's military a year ago, the Kremlin rejected U.S. complaints about Russian insistence that breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia remain free of Georgian control. Moscow, meantime, remained angry over U.S. refusal to back away from support for Georgia's hopes to join NATO.
After his breakfast meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Obama told Fox News Channel "on areas where we disagree, like Georgia, I don't anticipate a meeting of the minds anytime soon."
_Nor did there appear to have been progress in the dispute over arms control. While preparing a START I replacement treaty that would cut nuclear arsenals by about one-third, Moscow and Washington remained fundamentally at odds over U.S. plans for creating a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. U.S. officials discount Russian complaints about American intentions. But Moscow was still saying the two issues must be linked or a final agreement on cutting nuclear warheads and delivery systems could be in jeopardy. Washington insists missile defense is designed to protect U.S. allies against a potential nuclear attack by Iran. The Russians say such a system would put them at a disadvantage by unbalancing offensive nuclear parity.
Matters of substance:
The two sides did agree to far greater cooperation on Afghanistan, where Obama is bolstering U.S. troop strength in the fight against Taliban militants and other al-Qaida allied groups. Part of the deal will allow the U.S. to fly, without transit charges, American troops, weapons and other lethal war materiel across Russian territory. Such U.S. overflights had been limited to non-lethal supplies for the U.S.-led NATO force in Afghanistan, a country from which Russia withdrew in defeat 20 years ago after a decade-long occupation.
Negotiators also prepared a series of side agreements and established a commission nominally headed by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. It is designed to quicken the pace of U.S.-Russian engagement across a whole range of issues important to both countries.
In a briefing on the last day of the Obama visit, his top adviser on Russian affairs, Michael McFaul, dared reporters to find a past U.S.-Soviet summit where the two sides had dealt with so many matters of substance.
"We hit all of the dimensions of the U.S.-Russian relationship. ... That's a good start to what now begins the harder process of building this relationship in a more sustained way," McFaul said.
'KGB remains the same' Obama also joined two so-called parallel summits Tuesday afternoon, one of business leaders, the other of civil society organizations. Later he met privately with political opposition figures who are under near constant pressure in Russia's atmosphere of contracting democratic protections and press freedom.
Among the group was former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, who said Obama appeared to have held his own in his talks with Russia's leaders.
"This government is not ready for a dialogue. This government has the mentality of street hoodlums. I think that after looking into Obama's eyes Putin understood that this guy won't stand any jokes."
Outside the luxury hotel where Obama met with opposition leaders, a young man held up a sign that said: "Everything changes. The KGB remains the same." The sign was ripped from his hands by police and he slipped away. Putin is a former KGB officer, as are many of the officials serving in his government.
Wednesday morning Obama heads to a G-8 summit in Italy. While there he will meet Pope Benedict XVI, before moving on to Ghana where he plans to deliver what the White House describes as a major foreign policy speech.
(President Obama has arrived for a high-stakes meeting in Moscow. Will President Obama be able to "warm up" U.S. Foreign Relations with Russia? NBC's Savannah Guthrie reports.)
MOSCOW - President Barack Obama opened his first Moscow summit with confidence on Monday, predicting "extraordinary progress" out of meetings set to test his diplomatic skills on important priorities such as nuclear arsenal reductions and the fight in Afghanistan.
"The United States and Russia have more in common than they have differences," Obama said he sat down in an ornate Kremlin room with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. "If we work hard in these next few days ... we can make extraordinary progress that will benefit the people of both countries."
With both men eager to reset damaged relations, Obama's host launched the high-stakes summit with similar good will.
"We'll have a full-fledged discussion of our relations between our two countries, closing some of the pages of the past and opening some of the pages of the future," Medvedev said, through a translator. "It is my hope that it will be possible to tackle successfully" a range of problems from the economy to security and energy and the environment.
The first U.S.-Russia summit since the early part of the George W. Bush presidency presents a challenge for Obama — with Russia's wary public, a two-headed leadership and lingering hard feelings. Much of the world will watch signs of Obama's relationship with Russia's two leaders, Medvedev and his mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The foundation set now could affect how much cooperation Obama gets in areas in which the United States needs help from Russia — chiefly pressuring Iran and North Korea to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions, but also in tackling terrorism, global warming and the economy.
In search of early results:
Both sides are talking of improving their ties and wanting to show some early results.
Agreements negotiated ahead of time give Obama something to take home before the summit even got under way, including another step toward the world's two largest nuclear powers reducing their arsenals and agreement from Russia to let the United States use its territory and air space to move arms into Afghanistan for the forces fighting extremists there.
Other side agreements meant to sweeten the talks included a new joint commission to try to account for missing service members of both countries dating back to World War II. Four working groups will look into missing military personnel from World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War and Soviet military personnel still missing from Moscow's 10-year occupation of Afghanistan.
The White House also said the two countries have agreed to cooperate in the fields of public health and medical research, an arrangement intended to range across public health issues from infectious diseases to promotion of healthy lifestyles to improving global health.
Stuck on missile defense Yet, the two sides remain in a stalemate over the U.S. pursuit of a missile-defense system in Europe. Obama's administration is reviewing the efficacy of plan, which Bush had pushed hard.
U.S. leaders have expressed hope of getting Russian cooperation on missile defense. But both sides have also shown signs of hardening their positions ahead of the summit.
The basic problem is unchanged:
The United States contends the program is designed to protect U.S. allies in Europe from a potential nuclear attack by Iran, but the Russians see it as a first step toward a system that could weaken their offensive nuclear strike potential.
"We're going to have to work our way through that," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told "Fox News Sunday."
Obama's distinctive Air Force One jetliner touched down with drizzly gray skies blanketing Moscow. He continued down a formal reception line on the airport tarmac, introducing his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters to the Russian officials waiting to greet them.
The entourage then headed directly to a wreath-laying ceremony at Russia's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, brilliant sun breaking over the city's center as they drove in. The president walked slowly behind three high-stepping Russian soldiers, then straightened the wreath's ribbon where they placed it in front of the eternal flame and stood alone briefly.
The summit starts a weeklong trip for Obama that also features G-8 meetings and a visit with the pope in Italy, and a speech in Ghana.
Room for improvement:
Obama's mission in Moscow is two-pronged, divided over two days. Building ties and signing security and cultural deals with the leadership comes first. He will also devote a significant amount of time to leaders of Russia's civil society to help those relationships, too.
There is plenty of room for improvement. Obama, who has enjoyed adoring crowds in travels across Europe so far, will face a skeptical Russian population, polling out Sunday shows.
Only 23 percent of Russians have confidence in Obama to do the right thing in international affairs, according to the University of Maryland's WorldPublicOpinion.org. Just 15 percent of the Russians polled said the United States is playing a positive role in the world; most said the United States abuses it power and makes Russia do what the United States wants.
"I would like there to be real change, not just talk," said Valentina Titova, a 60-year-old retired economist strolling not far from the Kremlin. "I would like to see America meddle less in other countries. They think they're so superior to others, they put themselves on a pedestal."
Aiming to change attitudes, Obama will outline his vision for U.S.-Russian relations at a speech at the New Economic School. It is unclear how many people will see it. Russian leaders control the television outlets.
The dominant theme of the summit is security, and Obama and Medvedev are set to announce progress toward renewing a strategic arms reduction pact that expires in December. The eventual deal could cut warheads from more than 2,000 each to as low as 1,500 apiece.
"At the moment I think we are all moderately optimistic, both the Russian side and the American side, so far as I know," Medvedev said ahead of Obama's arrival in an interview with Italian news outlets.
As Obama told a Russian-language news channel in the days before the summit: "America respects Russia. We want to build relations where we deal as equals."
Heightened stakes:
Yet he also caused a stir in Russia by telling The Associated Press last week that Putin has to learn that "the old Cold War approaches to U.S.-Russian relations is outdated." That only elevated the stakes of Obama's first meeting with Putin, which is set for Tuesday.
Russia and the United States have been allies and adversaries. Obama inherited more of the latter, with relations having tanked in 2008 over Russia's war with neighboring Georgia.
Obama got off to a solid start, though, with Medvedev during an April meeting in London.
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