The president's wife Maria and several other high-ranking government officials, who were seen as the nation’s elite, were also onboard the Soviet-built plane, a Tupolev Tu-154.
The plane hit a tree before landing, losing the rear part of the fuselage a few hundred meters before the runway, local officials said.
Russian television showed smoldering fragments of the plane scattered in a forest. There was fog reported in the area, when the plane crashed at 10.56 Moscow time (8.56 CET).
Among the casualties were Slawomir Skrzypek, Poland’s central bank governor since 2007, Franciszek Gagor, the chief of the country’s military, several military commanders and Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer. Some relatives of the victims of the Katyn massacre were also on board.
"A second Katyn has striken Poland. The elite of our country has perished," said Lech Wałęsa, former President of Poland and iconic leader of the anti-communist movement Solidarność.
"It is the biggest tragedy, not only in Polish history," said historian Antoni Dudek.
"Katyn remains a tragic place for Poles" – said Ryszard Kalisz from the Alliance of Democratic Lefts (SLD).
EurActiv Poland reports that the last Polish President in exile during World War II, Ryszard Kaczorowski, was also on board, as well as Anna Walentynowicz, the brave woman who started the 1980 strike in Gdansk together with Lech Wałęsa. The German director Volker Schlöndorff made a film based on her biography a few years ago ('Strajk – The Hero from Gdansk/Danzig').
Poland‘in shock’
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk cried when he heard the news, said foreign minister Radosław Sikorski.
Lech Kaczyński, 60, became president in December 2005 after defeating Tusk in that year’s presidential vote. Kaczyński was planning to run for a second term in the presidential elections due this autumn.
Parliament speakerBronisław Komorowski will take over presidential duties, according to the Polish constitution. Komorowski, who is from Tusk’s Civic Platform party, was expected to be Kaczyński’s main opponent in the Presidential race.
A five-day national mourning was announced. The inhabitants of Warsaw are expected to gather at 20.30 this night on the Pilsudski Square in centre of Warsaw. In the memories of people, a similar reflective mood took place in Poland after the death of Pope John Paul II, five years ago.
In competition with Tusk?
Three days ago, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk was in Katyn, alongside his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, for a commemoration of the Katyn massacre. The commemoration was seen as a sign of steady improvement in relations between Russia and Poland (EurActiv 08/04/10).
In fact, Putin invited Tusk, while Kaczyński, who is seen in Russia with less sympathy, decided to go uninvited, three days later. According to press reports, until the last moment, details of his trip were hanging in the year, as the Russian Foreign Ministry claimed it had not been notified properly about Kaczynski’s intention to visit the Katyn massacre site.
In order to make it up for the lack of Russian representatives, Kaczyński had decided to surround himself with a large delegation, Polish sources told EurActiv.
Jedrzej Bielecki, a Polish journalist working for the daily Dziennik, told EurActiv from Warsaw that his country was in shock. The Polish presidency palace located in the historic centre was improvised as a mourning site, with thousands of Polish citizens laying flowers, lighting candles and praying, he said.
"For the time being, people live this difficult moment in a religious way. There will be many church services this afternoon. But people would also like to know what are the reasons behind this accident, and some elements are emerging," Bielecki said.
Pilot under pressure?
Bielecki said Polish citizens are now eager to know why the plane commander had attempted to land at Smolensk. Before it crashed, the plane had made three unsuccessful attempts to land at Smolensk airport, which was not fitted with modern navigation system, he said.
The plane commander had been advised to land in Minsk, Belarus, 400 km from there, Bielecki said. "We expect the black boxes to reveal if there was pressure on the commander to land in Smolensk," he added.
Bielecki has traveled several times with the presidential airplane. He said that on a previous occasion, when Kaczyński was travelling to Georgia in 2008, the commander refused to land in Tbilissi because the airport was not fitted with modern navigation systems.
"The pilot landed in Baku [in neighbouring Azerbaijan] and Kaczyński threatened to have him dismissed from his job," he said. Four years ago, Bielecki said one of the engines of the same plane took fire when he was accompanying finance minister Marek Belka to Vietnam.
"The big question is: did the president urge the pilot to land in Smolensk. Was there such a pressure?"
Bielecki said it was a paradox that Poland was the first former Communist country to get rid of its Soviet fleet, back in 1984, following the crash of an IL-62 in Warsaw of the Polish company LOT.
"LOT was the first airline of a communist country having changed its Soviet planes with Boeings, because the Polish citizens did not want to use Soviet planes. The paradox is that the leadership kept the last two Tupolev planes as official fleet. And it did not dare change them, because it would have been accused of over-spending in times of crisis," he said.
"When recently [foreign minister Radosław] Sikorski went to Kiev with his German colleague, they took a German plane because the Germans categorically refused to use the Tupolev plane," Bielecki further explained.
Another detail at which Bielecki pointed out is that Kaczyński’s plane was not on track for landing.
"The plane was found at 400 meters from the runway, but at seventy meters on the side. It was off-track. Even it had not hit a tree, it would have crashed," the Polish journalist said.
The Russian press wrote that the Polish presidential plane, which was buil in 1990, was recently modernized by the Russian company Aviakor in the city of Samara.
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