A Polish presidential plane flying to Smolensk, western Russia, in 2010 was “destroyed while in the air as a result of an explosion,” according to a report by investigators released in Warsaw on Wednesday.

A commission probing the disaster, which killed President Lech Kaczyński, and 95 others aboard - including top political and military figures - said that the catastrophe was not caused by pilot error.

According to the commission, first the presidential plane’s left wing exploded when the jet was more than 900 metres from Smolensk airport.

Later, while the plane was still in the air, there was an explosion in the plane’s hull and a total power failure, according to the report.

Air traffic controllers in Smolensk gave the Polish plane crew erroneous information on their approach to landing, the report added.

The report findings were released a day after commemorations across Poland on Tuesday, exactly eight years since the presidential plane disaster.

Poland’s ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party has long challenged an official report into the 2010 crash issued by the country's previous government, which cited a catalogue of errors on the Polish side, while also pointing to errors made by Russian staff at the control tower of Smolensk Military Airport.

A Russian report placed all the blame on the Poles.

Law and Justice has launched its own inquiry into the crash which, in initial findings, suggested the plane was probably destroyed by a mid-air explosion, and that Russian air traffic controllers deliberately misled the Polish pilots about their location as the presidential plane approached the runway of the Smolensk military airport in 2010.

In mid-December last year, Poland's defence minister at the time, Antoni Macierewicz, said that Russia was responsible for the plane crash. He also said that the Polish presidential plane was destroyed by "two explosions."

In January, the new team of investigators appointed by Macierewicz said that the jet’s left wing was destroyed as a result of an explosion on board.

The commission said that the explosion had “several sources” on the plane.

Macierewicz, who now himself heads the commission probing the disaster, said that the report made public on Wednesday focused on technical issues and was not the final report into the crash.

(pk/gs)

Source: IAR </s> Poland’s President Andrzej Duda on Tuesday demanded that Russia hand over the wreckage of a 2010 presidential plane crash that has stoked friction with Moscow and divisions at home as Warsaw marked eight years since the disaster.

President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria were among the 96 people who died in the crash in Smolensk, western Russia, on April 10, 2010.

“The plane wreckage is probably the most important evidence in this case — it’s still in Russia and the Russian authorities don’t want to hand it over,” Duda told Polish media.

“One can only ask why the Russians don’t want to return the wreck,” he added, after laying floral tributes on the graves of Kaczynski and his wife in the southern Polish city of Krakow.

Warsaw has repeatedly asked Moscow to hand over the wreckage and black boxes, but each time Russia has said it will only do so when its own inquiry is finished.

Ties have been strained since the crash as well as Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, which prompted the EU to impose sanctions against Russia.

The plane crash occurred as the Polish delegation was heading to a ceremony in Russia’s Katyn forest in memory of thousands of Polish army officers killed by Soviet secret police in 1940 — a massacre the Kremlin denied until 1990.

Poland’s governing rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) party, led by Kaczynski’s twin brother Jaroslaw, has long insisted the crash was no accident.

The previous liberal government blamed bad weather and errors by the Polish pilots and two Russian air traffic controllers.

In 2015, Polish prosecutors charged the former with “being directly responsible for having endangered air traffic” and the latter with “unintentionally causing an air traffic disaster”.

Having rejected the conclusions of the earlier investigation as a cover-up, the PiS government launched its own probe using new investigators.

They suggested last year that an explosion was likely to have caused the aircraft to break up in the air.

Polish justice officials have also exhumed the remains of the victims to test for traces of explosives or combustion.

Some 57 percent of Poles believe the crash was an accident, while 20 percent think it was an attack, according to a Pollster survey published Tuesday by the Super Express tabloid daily. Twenty-three percent have no opinion.

EU President Donald Tusk, who served as Poland’s prime minister at the time of the crash, is due in Warsaw later this month for questioning by prosecutors.

The liberal Tusk, who is an archrival of PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, alleged he was being politically targeted by investigators following a marathon eight hours of questioning in last August.

Senior PiS politicians have accused him of “diplomatic treason” in connection with the previous investigation.
Poland releases a new report on the disaster, which killed 96 including then-President Lech Kaczyński, rejecting previous findings and claiming instead air traffic controllers in Smolensk, Russia, gave the jet erroneous information prior to two explosions destroying the jet in midair.