The head of a commission investigating a 2010 plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski has vowed to press ahead with his probe, despite Warsaw shutting down the commission over its repeated “lies” about Russia’s role in the disaster.
Polish Deputy Prime Minister Minister Wladislaw Kosiniak-Kamysz ordered the closure of the commission on Friday. In a press conference that afternoon, Minister of State at the Defense Ministry Cezary Tomczyk accused the commision of peddling “lies in the name of the Polish state,” and spending “hundreds of millions of zlotys [Polish currency] on activities that have nothing to do with explaining the causes of the disaster, but have a lot to do with politics.”
The commission was formed in 2015 by Law and Justice (PiS) party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski to reinvestigate the 2010 plane crash that killed his twin brother, President Lech Kaczynski, and dozens of Polish lawmakers and officials. Jaroslaw Kaczynski believed that Russia was responsible for the crash, and that President Donald Tusk – whose Civic Platform party oversaw the initial investigation – “covered up” the incident as part of a “macabre reconciliation with Russia.”
With Tusk’s Civic Platform back in power and the commission ordered to stop its investigation, former Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz – who chaired the panel – told Poland’s PAP news agency on Saturday that he would continue his probe until next August as originally planned.
Macierewicz pointed out that the PiS legislation that set up the commission made no provision for its liquidation, and that the government is legally bound to accept its final report as Warsaw’s official position on the crash.
“No official of the Polish state can invalidate the report and cite some other material as a valid report,” Macierewicz claimed, accusing Kosiniak-Kamysz of “lawlessness.”
President Kaczynski and his wife were among 96 people on board the Polish Air Force Tu-154M that crashed outside Smolensk in western Russia on April 10, 2010, while attempting to land in thick fog. Official investigations by Polish and Russian authorities found no evidence of foul play, with both teams confirming that the pilots approached the airport too low, causing them to strike trees before reaching the runway.
The final report by Polish investigators was pulled from the government’s website by PiS in 2015, but restored on Friday, according to Tomczyk.
Macierewicz’ commission has repeatedly delayed the release of its final report, but has made a number of outlandish accusations during its seven-year investigation. It claimed in 2020 that Russian air traffic controllers directed the plane into the trees, while a 2018 report by the commission claimed that Russian operatives planted explosives on the aircraft. Neither claim was backed up by evidence, but Jaroslaw Kaczynski still claimed last year that the crash was planned “at the highest levels of the Kremlin.”
Moscow dismissed the commission’s activities as “endless fantasy-making.”