Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has likened the Smolensk air disaster, which killed his predecessor Lech Kaczyński and 95 others, to the current war in Ukraine. His comments came during commemorations marking the 12th anniversary of the crash.
As in previous years, the anniversary has been accompanied by suggestions from senior officials – including Jarosław Kaczyński, twin brother of Lech and leader of the ruling party – that the tragedy was no accident, and was instead caused deliberately by Russia, before being covered up with the help of the then Polish government.
Among those to repeat such insinuations today was the archbishop of Kraków, while the head of the government committee reinvestigating the crash claimed that evidence of an explosion caused by “unlawful interference” will be presented tomorrow.
Smolensk was an “attack decided at the highest level of the Kremlin”, says Jarosław Kaczyński ahead of the 12th anniversary of the crash.
Donald Tusk's government then “covered up” the incident as part of a “macabre reconciliation with Russia”, he adds https://t.co/5ae0gHJj3B
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) April 4, 2022
Commemoration of Smolensk regularly stirs controversy, and this year was no exception. Yesterday, the interior minister announced that sirens would sound across the whole of the country at 8:41 a.m., the time that the crash occurred on 10 April 2010.
That decision was criticised by mayors in many towns and cities – where opposition parties tend to hold power – who argued it would cause stress and confusion for Ukrainian refugees, over a million of whom are in Poland. They also noted that in previous years such siren calls have not been used on the Smolensk anniversary.
Their concerns were, however, overruled, with the sirens sounding this morning under the order of provincial governors, who are government appointees.
I don’t know what was going through the minds of Polish authorities that decided to commemorate 12th anniversary of president plane crash in Smolensk with… sirens that are set for 8.41 am tomorrow .
Having literally millions of Ukrainians that are traumatized by war in Poland.— Kateryna_Kruk (@Kateryna_Kruk) April 9, 2022
Meanwhile, Duda this morning attended a mass for victims of the Smolensk disaster at Wawel Castle in Kraków and then laid flowers at the tomb of Lech Kaczyński and his wife, Maria, which is located beneath the Wawel Cathedral.
Speaking afterwards, the president said that this year’s anniversary holds particular resonance because of events in Ukraine. “Just as we saw a destroyed plane then [in 2010], today we also see a destroyed Ukraine,” declared Duda.
He also said that “archival images of the Katyn massacre” – in which nearly 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia were murdered by the Soviets in 1940 and buried in mass graves – “are reminiscent” of images of the victims of Smolensk and of Russia’s current aggression in Ukraine.
While Duda’s remarks did not directly question the previous official findings that the Smolensk crash was an accident, the archbishop of Kraków, Marek Jędraszewski, who led the mass at Wawel, did make such suggestions.
“No one in their right mind would believe that a birch tree could tear off the wing of a large plane,” he said, referring to an element of the official explanation for the crash, which the archbishop dismissed as “the Smolensk lie”.
“There are forces that are vitally interested in preventing us from finding out about the truth of what happened,” continued Jędraszewski, quoted by Wprost. They want “this lie to be covered with silence similar to the silence that prevailed over the Katyn graves”.
The head of the government’s committee to reinvestigate the crash, former defence minister Antoni Macierewicz, today repeated his previous claims that “the cause of the Smolensk tragedy was an act of unlawful interference involving the destruction of the plane with an explosion”, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP).
Macierewicz said that “a report will be presented tomorrow clearly stating” these facts. In previous years he has made similar claims that evidence would soon be presented proving that the crash was no accident. But thus far no such conclusive proof has been unveiled, despite Macierewicz’s investigation recently entering its seventh year.
Two years ago, Macierewicz announced that his committee’s final report was ready and would soon be released. However, it is still yet to be published.
It appears unlikely that Macierewicz’s comments today were meant to suggest that the final report will be presented tomorrow given that, earlier this week, Kaczyński told Radio Plus that the document – which he said is over 10,000 pages long – would not be published to coincide with this year’s anniversary.
Main image credit: Grzegorz Jakubowski/KPRP
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
