Kaczynski crash report widens Moscow-Warsaw rift

By Ulf Mauder and Jacek Lepiarz Jan 12, 2011, 21:36 GMT

Moscow/Warsaw - A fatal combination of alcohol and political strong-arming contributed to the plane crash last April that claimed the life of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, an official Russian investigation has found.

Its report, released on Wednesday, says that Polish Air Force commander Andrzej Blasik was drunk in the cockpit when he pressured the pilot to land the Tupelev TU-154 despite bad weather.

The pilot, already under pressure owing to the many prominent officials on board, brought the plane in for landing despite urgent Russian warnings not to do so.

All 96 people aboard the plane died in the crash.

Any possible fault on the part of Russian flight controllers was dismissed categorically by that country's MAK air safety agency director, Tatyana Anodina, in a clear attempt to squelch a flurry of conspiracy theories.

The Poles, especially Kaczynski's twin brother Jaroslaw, are particularly upset that Moscow left out any mention of the Russian responsibility. From the Polish point of view, the tower at Smolensk airport failed to turn on landing lights on the runway.

The report is 'a travesty', said the late president's surviving twin.

In Poland, many are convinced the crash was not a coincidence. They do not believe that the death of Russia's arch-enemy Kaczynski could have been an accident - not on Russian soil and not near Katyn, the site of a Soviet massacre of thousands of Polish officers.

To allay such suspicions, however, Moscow has gone far towards reconciliation. In particular, it handed over many Katyn files to Warsaw in the wake of the crash.

The crash report does confirm one of the original theories as to the cause, stating that the pilots were under pressure to land.

The explosive detail that Blasik had been drinking early in the morning on his way to the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre had been kept under wraps by the Russians until now. It stunned Warsaw to learn that Blasik's blood-alcohol level was excessively high.

Even before the MAK news conference in Moscow was over, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk broke off his holiday.

When preliminary details of the report had emerged in mid- December, Tusk had dismissed them as 'unacceptable' and demanded an impartial portrayal of the events leading to the crash - especially because his own political credibility was at stake.

Tusk did not want to derail three years of overtures towards Moscow. But because he accepted the Russian takeover of the investigations, he has been accused repeatedly of transforming Poland into a Russian colony.

One key issue is the official status of the flight.

Poland considered the flight to be military, diplomatic and official - in which case the airport bore responsibility for all decisions. But with civilian flights, the pilot alone bears final responsibility for deciding to land.

The investigation report also provided the final minutes of conversations as recorded on the cockpit voice recorder.

Immediately before the crash, the pilot can be heard saying, 'I'm not sure about this, but if we don't land here then he will give me all kinds of trouble.'

'He' apparently referred to the president.

'He'll go crazy,' said another, unidentified voice.

The crew knew how seriously Kaczynski took such things. When a pilot refused to land his plane in the Georgian capital Tbilisi in the wake of the South Caucasus war in 2008, the president saw to it that he was barred from further flights.

On that occasion, because of the pilot's decision to land elsewhere, the president was forced to make a long trip by road.

For the ceremonies in Katyn, Kaczynski was reportedly determined to be punctual.