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President of Poland Dies in a Plane Crash
DarkCrawler
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...along with a LOT of other government officials.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8612825.stm
Can't really say anything else but that it's a black day for Poland. That's a big part of a government to be killed in one strike.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8612825.stm
Polish President Lech Kaczynski dies in plane crash
Polish President Lech Kaczynski and scores of others have been killed in a plane crash in Russia.
Polish and Russian officials said no-one had survived after the plane apparently hit trees as it approached Smolensk's airport in thick fog.
Poland's army chief, central bank governor, MPs and leading historians were among more than 80 passengers.
They were flying in from Warsaw to mark 70 years since the Katyn massacre of thousands of Poles by Soviet forces.
The BBC's Adam Easton, in Warsaw, says the crash is a catastrophe for the Polish people.
He says Prime Minister Donald Tusk was reportedly in tears when he was told.
Mr Tusk, who runs the day-to-day business of government, has called an emergency meeting of ministers.
A government spokesman said that according to the constitution there would be an early presidential election, and the speaker of the lower house of parliament, Bronislaw Komorowski, would become acting president.
The Russian emergencies ministry told Itar-Tass news agency the plane crashed at 1056 Moscow time (0656 GMT).
Smolensk regional governor Sergei Antufiev told Russian TV that no-one had survived.
"As it was preparing for landing, the Polish president's aircraft did not make it to the landing strip," he said.
"According to preliminary reports, it got caught up in the tops of trees, fell to the ground and broke up into pieces. There are no survivors in that crash."
Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Piotr Paszkowski said it could be assumed with "great certainty" that no-one had survived.
"We still cannot fully understand the scope of this tragedy and what it means for us in the future. Nothing like this has ever happened in Poland," Mr Paszkowski said.
Polish TV worker Slawomir Wisniewski said he had seen the crash from his hotel near the airport.
"I saw through the fog, the aeroplane flying very low with the left wing pointing to the ground," he said.
"I heard something being broken and then that thudding sound. Two flashes of fire next to each other."
It is unclear how many people were on board. Polish officials said the delegation was 88-strong, while local officials said 96 people had been killed.
Russian investigators had earlier said there were 132 people on the plane.
Russian media carried claims that the plane's crew were at fault for the crash.
"The pilot was advised to land in Minsk, but decided to land in Smolensk," said Andrei Yevseyenkov, a Smolensk regional government spokesman.
Controversial figure
The president was flying in a Tupolev 154, a Soviet-designed plane that was more than 20 years old.
Our correspondent says there had been calls for Polish leaders to upgrade their planes.
As well as the president and his wife, Maria, a number of senior officials were on the passenger list.
They included the army chief of staff Gen Franciszek Gagor, central bank governor Slawomir Skrzypek and deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer.
World leaders including Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown offered their condolences to Poland.
Mr Kaczynski, who had fewer powers than the prime minister but had a significant say in foreign policy, was a controversial figure in Polish politics.
He had advocated a right-wing Catholic agenda, opposed rapid free-market reforms and favoured retaining social welfare programmes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Polish_Air_Force_Tu-154_crashAccording to the flight manifest on-board were:
Lech Kaczyński, President of Poland
Maria Kaczyńska, First Lady of Poland
Krystyna Bochenek, Deputy Speaker of the Senat
Bishop Mirosław Chodakowski, Orthodox Ordinary of the Polish Army
Leszek Deptuła, member of the Sejm
Grzegorz Dolniak, member of the Sejm
Janina Fetlińska, member of the Senat
General Franciszek Gągor, Chief of the Polish Army General Staff
Grażyna Gęsicka, member of the Sejm
Przemysław Gosiewski, member of the Sejm
Mariusz Handzlik, Undersecretary of State in the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland
Izabela Jaruga-Nowacka, member of the Sejm
Ryszard Kaczorowski, the last President of the Polish government-in-exile
Sebastian Karpiniuk, member of the Sejm
Vice Admiral Andrzej Karweta, Commander-in-chief of the Polish Navy
Janusz Kochanowski, Polish Ombudsman
Andrzej Kremer, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs
Janusz Kurtyka, Historian and president of the Institute of National Remembrance
Tomasz Merta, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage
Aleksandra Natalli-Świat, member of the Sejm
Piotr Nurowski, President of the Polish Olympic Committee
Maciej Płażyński, President of the Polish Community association
Tadeusz Płoski, bishop of the Military Ordinariate of the Polish Army
Krzysztof Putra, Deputy Speaker of the Sejm
Andrzej Przewoźnik, Secretary-General of the Council for the Defence of the Memory of Struggle and Suffering
Ryszard Rumianek, Rector of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University
Arkadiusz Rybicki, member of the Sejm
Sławomir Skrzypek, President of the National Bank of Poland
Władysław Stasiak, Chief of the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland
Aleksander Szczygło, head of the National Security Bureau
Jerzy Szmajdziński, Deputy Speaker of the Sejm
Jolanta Szymanek-Deresz, member of the Sejm
Anna Walentynowicz, free trade union activist, member of Solidarity
Zbigniew Wassermann, member of the Sejm
Wiesław Woda, member of the Sejm
Edward Wojtas, member of the Sejm
Paweł Wypych, Secretary of State in the Office of the President of the Republic of Poland
Stanisław Zając, member of the Senat
Can't really say anything else but that it's a black day for Poland. That's a big part of a government to be killed in one strike.
DarkCrawler on
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That's terrible, and I hope Poland can recover quickly.
This is just mind-boggling.
I mean everyone is probably thinking in the back of his head whether russia could have something to do with this, although this would be to crazy even for them, imho.
All depends on how russia-friendly the guys replacing the dead are
This is the equivalent of the entire WH staff, the Cabinet, the Joint Chiefs, and the leaders of Congress all getting on Air Force One together, if Air Force One was a charter flight and not the most technologically advanced 747 in the world.
The President of Poland doesn't have the same power as the President has in the U.S. The Prime Minister is the true political leader.
Don't get me wrong, this is still pretty wierd, but it's not like the entire Polish leadership was in the plane.
Ah, ok. I guess that's actually the norm, huh? Head of State and Head of Government being two different people? It just kind of boggles the mind that there were that many important people on one plane. And that list only seems to have government officials--I'm assuming that there were also prominent members of the press on board and lots of other important non-officials?
True, but the President had a lot of their foreign affairs power. In many respects like the U.S., domestic policy and law can be guided by the President (like Obama has been trying to do, damn slow-ass Senate), but domestically all the power is really with Congress.
Its foreign affairs that the President has more power with.
Apparently Poland is having elections soonish anyway, and the "Speaker of the House" equivalent that they have becomes President Pro Tem and was aiming for President anyway. So hopefully the political impact of this tragedy will not be quite as bad as it sounds.
Almost 100 people, most with high-level government positions, are dead. Not only is it a human tragedy but now Poland is going to have to use the parts of it's constitution that nobody ever imagined happening. Kinda like "lol what wud hppen if everyone diez? lol."
On top of that, isn't Poland's constitution only like 20 years old? It's not what I would choose as the first stress-test of parliamentary procedure.
But that's just me ad-libbing. I don't really know much about Poland at all. I'm just sayin'...
Lech Kaczynski was a right wing nutjob and a virulent homophobe, still though this is a sad day for Poland and I hope Europe comes together to support them.
No, that is totally what I felt when I read the thread the first time. This was a significant portion of the upper echelon. Not everybody or even the PM, which in most parlimentary systems is the big cheese. But still. This is going to cause a massive discontinuity in government. And yet not.
Thank God for staff, notes, documents, briefings and backup plans.
But still, this is going to change things. People are going to be moved into higher jobs simply to fill the vacancies, which means that policy attitudes are going to change. Because some of these people are going to be policy-makers.
It also seriously sounds like something out of a Tom Clancy novel where Poland collapses and Russia uses it as an impetus to recreate the old Soviet bloc or something.
It really does. I'd say Russia has enough on its plate, but given its actions in Georgia and Chechnya, I'd guess Putin doesn't much care.
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I suppose, on the side, this is a chance for Russia to work to further improve its rather poor relations with Poland (though there have been some other attempts--Russia invited Poland, along with other nations who were members of the Allied Powers, to march in the 2010 Victory Parade in May) by fostering cooperation over the investigation for this.
It's a very much high-profile case (Christ, that list), so the practical reasons aside might be enough to convince Russia of that. They're in a good position to foster cooperation with Poland's other neighbors--Belarus, Ukraine, etc.--especially the ones that, uh, don't exactly like Poland (*cough* Belarus).
Well, the plane crashed in Russia, which has had some rather rocky relations with Poland of late.
Oh, that doesn't even fully convey it. This is what would happen if the State of the Union rocks-fall-everyone-dies scenario played out on Air Force One, and the plane crashed directly on Ground Zero, on 9/11.
There might CONCIEVABLY be a bigger tragedy that could theoretically happen to the country of Poland, but I can't think of what it would be.
Imagine the horrid country ballad that would be associated with that tragedy if it happened in the United States.
I hope the Poles have the good taste not to do what we'd do in that event.
EDIT: According to preliminary observations, the cause seems to be, as earlier mentioned, pilot error (rather than technical). This specific aircraft, made in 1990, tail-number 101, had a long service as the Polish Presidential Aircraft, had been recently renovated.
Medvedev gave his condolences, and announced a national day of mourning in Russia. I can't have a complete translation of his speech on TV, otherwise I'd post it.
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"Where were you, when thestateoftheunionwasheldonairforconeanditcrashedintotwotowersonnineeleven?
Where were you, when it seemed that hope would dieleven?"
I think Katyn, the tragedy which everyone was going to honor, was a bigger tragedy. Especially considering it was kept concealed for almost 50 years.
That's why everyone was in the plane. It would be like if there were a fire at a 9/11 memorial: many, many important people would die.
This is truly a tragedy, despite Kaczynski's goosery.
Lol, of late? More like for hundreds of years.
If I understand correctly, the event of the Katyn Massacre served as a centerpoint for one (of a few different) memorial for the "victims of totalitarianism", which was the formal function of the ceremony.
While I don't think you can compare the two (Katyn was perpetrated by people, human actors, in wartime, whereas this was a horrible accident), the implications are pretty tragic.
Speculation is that there was heavy pressure on the crew to land in time for the ceremony, as normally under these circumstances the flight would've been diverted, and 4 attempts to land is very unorthodox.
If I understand it correctly, the reason the president was at this site at the first place (instead of at the memorial with Putin last week) was that he wanted to orgistrate an event with political allies.
I'm not saying Putin did anything. I don't know. I just don't think Obama should be doing much traveling to Russia anymore.
What if Glenn Beck and Vladimir Putin are the same person? Seriously have you ever seen both of them in the same room at the same time?
In seriousness this pretty terrible for the Poles, and I sincerely hope Russia had nothing to do with it. Poland has enough troubles with this without it having been foul play.
So, we're at Go Wild! at this point yes?
Sad day for the Poles, though.
If you're at all serious, stop being a retard. Seriously. I skimmed over the article in the OP because I'd already read about this elsewhere, so maybe that one didn't mention heavy fog, but the immediate leap to OMG! Tom Clancy! with some apparent sincerity is really really dumb.
That's, uh, a rather sinister detail to mention at the end, guy. =X
I heard more or less the same thing (observers describing trees sheered at their tops), except it was on the second attempt. I'm not sure if it was two or four.
And, of course, let's go ahead and bleed through the "...it was done by Vladimir Putin/Gregory Rasputin/Count Chocula" theories quickly if possible.
Chocula! That bastard! Invade Choculavania!