MOSCOW, February 15. /TASS/. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski called the plane crash near Smolensk on April 10, 2010 an aviation accident rather than an assassination attempt at a press conference broadcast by Polish TV channels.
Asked about the investigation into the crash, Sikorski recalled that "the investigation into the airplane accident, not an assassination attempt, as claimed by [Law and Justice (PiS)] party leader [Jaroslaw Kaczynski], was conducted by the Polish commission for investigating airplane accidents." "This commission published a report that was deleted from government servers by the previous authorities," he pointed out.
Sikorski added that the assassination version was used by the previous Law and Justice party government for propaganda purposes.
The Tu-154M plane crashed on the morning of April 10, 2010 near Smolensk in dense fog. All 96 people on board, including Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria, died as a result. Specialists of the Interstate Aviation Committee concluded that the disaster occurred as a result of the actions of the crew, which under mental duress made the wrong decision to land in unfavorable weather conditions. In its 2011 report, the Polish government commission listed crew error and the fact that the pilot ignored the signals of the terrain awareness and warning system (TAWS) among the causes of the aircraft’s crash, in addition to descending to an unacceptable altitude.
In October 2015, the Law and Justice party came to power in Poland. Kaczynski's government claimed that the previous leadership had not sufficiently scrutinized all the circumstances of the tragedy and formed a new investigative commission, which allegedly found evidence of an explosion on board and claimed that the crash was a planned assassination attempt. The Polish prosecutor's office has repeatedly said that there are no indications to support the version of presidential flight being subject to foul play.
After the new government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk came to power in Poland following the October 15 election results, Macierewicz's commission was abolished and its activities are being looked into.