Uhh. A black day for Poland.
 

Polish President Killed In Plane Crash


A plane with Polish President Lech Kaczynski on board crashed Saturday on landing at Smolensk in western Russia, foreign ministry spokesman Piotr Pszkowski said.

"The plane scraped the tree tops, crashed and caught fire," he said on the private television channel TVN24.

"On board were the president, accompanied by his wife, the army chief of staff and Deputy Foreign Minisiter Andrzej Kremer," he said.

The plane, a Tupolev 154, had a capacity of up to 90 people, he added.

The regional governor of Smolensk said there were no survivors.

"It clipped the tops of the trees, crashed down and broke into pieces," the governor of the Smolensk region, Sergei Antufiev, told Russia-24 television news network by telephone.

"There were no survivors."

95 people died (including the crew)


I myself am actually not able to be funny for next day or two. :huh:
Maybe not many people liked him... but most important people of our government died there. I'm in shock and sad.
They were going to attend the anniversary of a big tragedy in Katyn.

My condolences Piz :(

As you get older you find that when people die it affects you (not as much as it did when you were younger death is something you dont understand fully as a child), even if it's people you didn't know personally.

Well gee. My friend commited suicide, people of my family died. People die, I get sad. Sorry it's harsh, but you speak like death is something new.
I'm just in shock that our national Elite died today, near Katyn. History repeating itself.

How many deaths do they want before they ditch those old, poorly maintained Tupolevs?

I hope Poland won't get plunged into much chaos because of this accident.

I hope there's a constitutionally valid Line of Succession in place. I don't know much about Poland's Governmental structure, but I'm sure things on that front will be fine. I also hope none of the politicians use this time to take partisan pot shots.

Wow, i'm impressed...

My condolences, and yes, this kind of sudden deaths are so impressive because you can think, maybe is their time... but is a tragic way to do it.

I can only wish for something like that to happen in my country to our corrupted government.

Terrible that so many high ranking officials died in one incident, I hope Poland recovers.

We don't mind corruption when people die, specially like this.
Who died? President and his wife. ALL OF OUR HEAD MILITARY GENERALS.
Heads of Polish National banks. Katyn's tragedy families. Ombudsman for Citizen Rights. Many politicians from our government. Senators.
All people connected with russian/polish culture and history of military. All in this one plane.


Dky, our Tupolev just had a general renovation. The airport (not big one, it's a military airport) was foggy and didn't have specialistic equipment to help planes in fogged landings. But it was perhaps foolish of the pilots to try and land there, when they had a warning about bad conditions. Hour before other plane tried to land there, but turned to other airport.

I'm very impressed that Russia has that much sympathy. We used to be really bad enemies.

Now the black boxes have been found, I hope we get to know what happened very soon.

We will recover, every country would. We have special list of what to do in such situations. The thing is, these people were one of a kind. The persons, their history, their minds. It's a really sad day.

It's the biggest tragedy, not only in Poland, but possibly in the whole world, in which the Elite Intelligence died in a catastrophe. Ironically, same happened in Katyn, 70 years ago.

Terrible news. I heard on the radio while was in the car, but they said it was Poland president and his wife only. I didn't know the rest of elite were in the plane too.
Hopefully, Poland will recover fast and without consequences.