Smolensk air disaster 'was caused by mystery explosion' [The Telegraph]

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 Above image: 

 Wladimir Putin and Donald Tusk

".... “They were supposed to attend a second memorial service,” wrote Professor Nicholas Dima at the time in his article Katyn Tragedy Redux. “The first one had been held three days earlier, but President Kaczyński was irritated because Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had invited only the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, and the Russian leader had not mentioned the Polish officers massacred by the KGB (NKVD). Consequently, Kaczynski wanted a proper ceremony held at Katyn and was on his way to attend it.”  There’s a school of thought that believes Kaczynski took the bait and fell into Vladimir Putin’s trap.

[edited post; for this excerpt see the last link at the bottom of this post: Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research: Is it time to revisit Putin’s role in the Smolensk crash?]

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      In order to keep Poland shifted to West as a stone to fix forever the Oder-Neisse line. European Union as the definitive cage where to entrap Germany after the outcome of WWII. The economical crisis and the constant impoverishment of the South-East Europe is the price paid to Germany in order to accept an eternal burial in the Golden Cage (EU) of the Counter Reformation. The Russian Bear as guardian to avoid any possible "Drang Nach Osten" in the future. 

       Article reported in Smolensk Crash - The Rejected Truth:

14.04.2014

The Telegraph: Smolensk air disaster 'was caused by mystery explosion'

 Source: The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/10758863/Smolensk-air-disaster-was-caused-by-mystery-explosion.html

 Reported in:  http://smolenskcrash.eu/news-98-the-telegraph-smolensk-air-disaster-39was-caused-by-mystery-explosion39.html

The claim was made in a report that was published as Poland commemorated the fourth anniversary of the plane crash that claimed the lives of President Lech Kaczynski and dozens from the country's political, military and civil elite.

Polish MP claims in report that Lech Kaczynski, the president of Poland, was assassinated by an explosion on the plane.

The Smolensk air disaster that claimed the lives of the former president, his wife and 94 others, was caused by a mysterious explosion on board that ripped the aircraft apart according to a Polish MP.

The claim was made in a report that was published as Poland commemorated the fourth anniversary of the plane crash that claimed the lives of President Lech Kaczynski and dozens from the country's political, military and civil elite.

An official air-crash investigation concluded the disaster was an accident caused by a number of factors such as pilot error and thick fog enveloping Smolensk airport as the Tupolev Tu-154 government plane tried to land at Smolensk airport in western Russia on the morning of April 10, 2010.

But in a 200-page report entitled "Four Year after Smolensk: How the President Died," Antoni Macierewicz, an MP from Law and Justice, a party founded by Lech Kaczynski and his twin brother Jaroslaw, claimed the plane was brought down by an explosion.

Mr Macierewicz and Mr Kaczynski have long maintained the president was assassinated, possibly by the Russians, and the present Polish government was involved in a cover-up. 

"Never in the history of the world has a government and prosecutors strived so hard to block access to the truth," Mr Macierewicz told reporters as he began the report's presentation.

Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister who also lost colleagues at Smolensk, has always rebuffed any accusations that his government was somehow involved in the disaster.

Citing expert witnesses Mr Macierewicz said fragments of the wreckage showed signs of an explosion that occurred shortly before the plane hit the ground. In a presentation on his report the MP released photographs appearing to show sections of the aircraft bent outwards, as if they had been subjected to a blast.

He also said the scattering of the debris was consistent with a mid-air explosion rather than impact with the ground.

The report may add some momentum to the belief many Poles have that the Smolensk disaster was no accident, but is unlikely to sway the view of the majority, who dismiss conspiracy theories.

A recent opinion poll for the TVN news network found that 61 per cent did not believe a bomb was involved while 25 per cent believed the opposite.
---
Source: The Telegraph
Author: Matthew Day
Photo: Mikhail Metzel/AP

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Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Anders Breivik and Lithuanian political scandals 

http://control-avles-blogs.blogspot.it/2014/04/anders-breivik-and-lithuanian-political.htm

     Edited one hour later after publishing,  I add also the two previous articles from the same site - Warning: to exclusively blame FSB and Putin's neo-Fascist Russia  is another way to hide the probably even more heavy responsibility of EU's elite in the  murder of the most dangerous Euro-skeptics; both Eastern Roman Empire (Putin's Russia) and Western Roman Empire (Jesuits' European Union) are the beneficiary of this crime:

11.04.2014

The Daily Beast: Did Putin Blow Up the Whole Polish Government in 2010? A Second Look.

URL:  http://smolenskcrash.eu/news-97-the-daily-beast-did-putin-blow-up-the-whole-polish-government-in-2010-a-second-look.html

A plane crash at Smolensk in Russia four years ago wiped out the Warsaw leadership. It used to be seen as an accident. Now, after Putin’s games in Ukraine, people aren’t so sure.

by Will Cathcart

Four years ago this week, Polish President Lech Kaczynski was killed in a plane crash near the Katyn Forest in Russia where he was flying to honor the 22,000 Polish officers, lawyers, priests and professors slaughtered there by the Soviets 70 years before. Ninety-five other military, political and public figures including his wife died on that plane. One of the more heartbreaking details to emerge was that First Lady Maria Kaczynska’s body could be identified only by her nail polish and the inscription inside her wedding ring.

Less than two years before the crash the late president had given a speech warning that if Russian aggression was not stopped in Georgia, which Russia had invaded, it would extend to Ukraine, the Baltics, and possibly Poland as well. “We are here to take up the fight,” he said. And many Poles still believe that their president died in the cause of that effort. Physicist Kazimierz Nowaczyk is one of them.

On April 10, 2010 at 10:41 a.m. Polish Air Force Flight 101 crashed several hundred meters short of the Smolensk runway in dense fog. Within hours the Russian government issued a statement citing the incident on pilot error. Russia’s final report on the incident blamed the late President Kaczyński and his “inebriated” air force commander-in-chief for using “psychological pressure” to force the Polish pilots to land in a low-visibility environment.

The plane’s black boxes, laptops, sensitive documents, mobile phones, address books, telephone numbers, correspondence, and the top-secret military, NATO and diplomatic codes on board were salvaged from crash site immediately by the Kremlin’s operatives in what was a “coup for Russia’s intelligence service” according to retired CIA analyst Gene Poteat. What Nowaczyk calls “years worth of work for security services” was completed in a single day by Russia’s OMON Special Purpose Police, which were immediately deployed to the site.

The airplane was a 20-year-old Russian Tupolev-154M that had been refurbished and upgraded in Russia four months before, a detail that has become the subject of considerable speculation on the many forums and groups dedicated to investigating the conspiracy theory surrounding the flight.

According to Poteat, “Forty minutes before the crash, a Russian YAK-40 airplane with 40 people on board landed safely. Twenty minutes before the crash a Russian AWAC airplane did a touch-and-go at the airport then flew on to Moscow.”

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Nowaczyk describes the findings of an independent Polish parliamentary committee investigating the crash of which he is a member. The group consists of scientists from various backgrounds and relies only on “scientific tools” in its investigation, he said. But the committee was formed by Polish parliamentary factions, such as that of the late president’s brother, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who have not found the official Polish-Russian report on the incident satisfactory.

“From our point of view this report was full of mistakes,” Nowaczyk explains, citing various inconsistencies and contradictions in the official narrative. A key issue raised by Nowaczyk’s committee and the many online forums dedicated to the crash is that the amount of debris found at the site—an estimated 60,000 aircraft fragments—would be impossible in the case of a simple plane crash. He cites the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the 1996 TWA 800 flight out of New York, both of which exploded in the air but had only 11,000 aircraft fragments and 3,168 fragments respectively. Both planes were reconstructed to 95 percent completion. Nowaczyk believes that an explosion caused the fragmentation of the Polish president’s plane. In the official report the plane’s black boxes indicate that the aircraft’s electricity was cut two to three seconds before the crash, which Nowaczyk believes also was caused by that explosion.

Like many of those pursuing these theories Nowaczyk personally knew four people who died in the crash, including the late president. The Polish physicist’s voice grows faint, almost pleading, “I simply want to know the truth.”

Earlier this week—on April 8, 2014—Polskie Radio reported that the Polish District Military Prosecutor in Warsaw, Colonel Ireneusz Szelag, presented 1,300 pages of documentation, in advance of the four-year anniversary, ruling out “any possibility that an explosion occurred aboard the Polish presidential plane that crashed in Smolensk on 10 April 2010.” The prosecutor stated, “After analysing 700 samples, experts found no traces that an explosion had taken place aboard the Tu-154 plane… The experts had unimpeded access to the site of the catastrophe, and to the place where the wreck of the plane is being stored.” The prosecutor stated that the investigation would be closed next year, even if the aircraft’s wreckage is not returned to Poland.

That is not likely to calm the roiling tide of speculation about a conspiracy, especially in light of Putin’s recent actions in Ukraine. Already last year nearly one third of the Polish population believed there was a possibility that their president had been assassinated. The number is unusually high for a conspiracy theory, suggesting just how fearful Poland is about Russian intentions.

But it is increasingly hard to separate the forensic aspects of the case from the intense political maneuvering around it in Poland. The incident has been used to fuel anti-Russian sentiment among far-right groups, to demonstrate anti-Russian credentials and to further political careers. The general public has every reason to be skeptical. Now at a time when anti-Russian sentiment is already running high, this theory could further embitter the Polish people if it continues to gather momentum and recognition.

For the majority of the country and the mainstream media, supposition that the Smolensk crash was not an accident remains a fringe theory fraught with political implications. Those who propagate it are considered paranoids or activists with an axe to grind. But Putin’s performance over the last eight weeks has given the world good cause to revisit conspiracy theories, including some that only two months ago would have seemed ludicrous and absurd.

---

Author: Will Cathcart
Photo: Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters
source: www.thedailybest.com; http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/11/did-putin-blow-up-the-whole-polish-government-in-2010-a-second-look.html

Will Cathcart is a former media advisor to the President of Georgia and former managing editor of the Charleston Mercury newspaper. Will currently works in media and business development in the Black Sea region.

 See also (linked with the info of a comment of Hristo Stiliyanov  then by me forgotten): 
 

Христо СтилияновApril 16, 2014 at 6:28 AM

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/15/us-poland-government-tusk-idUSBREA3E1CR20140415

The crash of the government jet in Smolensk in April 2010 killed President Lech Kaczynski, the twin brother of the current opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and 95 top-ranking officials travelling with him.

Some members of the opposition said Tusk carried at least part of the blame for the crash because of his duty to provide security for the plane, an allegation he rejected.

ReplyDelete

Not only security.... it seems he was Putin's friend....:

URL: http://smolenskcrash.eu/news-100-selous-foundation-for-public-policy-research-is-it-time-to-revisit-putins-role-in-the-smolensk-crash.html

09.04.2014

Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research: Is it time to revisit Putin’s role in the Smolensk crash?

After the Smolensk plane crash, the speed with which the disaster became relegated to “yesterday’s news” was stunning. An uninformed observer might conclude that what happened at Smolensk was but a minor incident, and didn’t involve the deaths of Poland’s president, and almost one hundred members of the military and political elite of a key U.S.-Central European ally on NATO’s border with Russia. --- by Pawel Styrna

Four years ago the Soviet-built Tupolev 154M jetliner carrying Polish President Lech Kaczyński, his wife and First Lady Maria Kaczyńska, leading a delegation of 94 Polish government officials, including high ranking civilian and military officials, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre – crashed on April 10, 2010 killing all aboard before landing at Smolensk, Russia, just east of the Belarus border.

“They were supposed to attend a second memorial service,” wrote Professor Nicholas Dima at the time in his article Katyn Tragedy Redux. “The first one had been held three days earlier, but President Kaczyński was irritated because Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had invited only the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, and the Russian leader had not mentioned the Polish officers massacred by the KGB (NKVD). Consequently, Kaczynski wanted a proper ceremony held at Katyn and was on his way to attend it.”  There’s a school of thought that believes Kaczynski took the bait and fell into Vladimir Putin’s trap.

In the short span of post-Soviet Russian history, 1991-to-date, the rise to power of KGB Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Putin in 2000 can be characterized as an ongoing series of events marching towards the goal of re-establishing hegemony over the space once occupied by the former Soviet Union. Edward Lucas, author of The New Cold War: Putin’s Russia and the Threat to the West, wrote in 2008, “The Soviet Union’s notorious secret service, the KGB, has returned under a new name and is now running the Kremlin.”

Perhaps the gauntlet was thrown down to the West in 2005 during Putin’s annual speech to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, our equivalent of a State of the Union Address, when he proclaimed: “Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century.”  This would be akin to a German chancellor’s statement that the destruction of the Third Reich was the major geopolitical disaster of the century. Subsequent hegemonic events can be highlighted by Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the Polish airliner crash at Smolensk in 2010.  Now, in 2014, we see the blatant invasion of Ukraine and the bold annexation of Crimea, with the West being caught completely off guard.

Not that long ago, Vice President Joe Biden ridiculed Mitt Romney’s recognition of Russia as America’s “number one geopolitical threat.” The Republican presidential candidate, Biden sneered, failed to grasp that the Cold War was over. This was a common response to anyone suggesting, post-1991, that Moscow intended to rebuild its empire. Now, as Russian forces are massing on Ukraine’s eastern frontiers, most scoffers have been rudely awakened.

After the Smolensk plane crash, the speed with which the disaster became – not unlike Benghazi – relegated to “yesterday’s news” was stunning. An uninformed observer might conclude that what happened at Smolensk was but a minor incident, and didn’t involve the deaths of Poland’s president, and almost one hundred members of the military and political elite of a key U.S.-Central European ally on NATO’s border with Russia – and under highly suspicious circumstances.

The eagerness with which the liberal post-communist Tusk government in Warsaw moved to sweep Smolensk under the rug – and the almost unquestioning and docile manner in which it accepted Moscow’s obviously deceptive explanations and its brazen cover-up – could easily reinforce such an impression. If Poland’s government is satisfied with the Russian narrative, why pursue the matter further? That seems to have been Team Obama’s rationale, at least officially, for rejecting a petition for an independent international investigation into the crash.

It was certainly a convenient excuse, but why was Warsaw so willing to swallow a patently disingenuous version of the Smolensk crash cooked up by Chekists trained to deceive, intimidate, and kill? If we rule out – for hypothetical reasons – the role of potential Russian moles and agents of influence (both in Washington and in Warsaw), then the most charitable explanation could only be that both the American and Polish governments feared they would antagonize Russia. This, of course, leads to another question: why would Moscow be angry about attempts to pursue the truth, if those pushing the Kremlin’s “pilot error” narrative of the Smolensk crash were indeed correct? Why suffer a PR debacle instead of putting all suspicions to rest and finally silencing those pesky Russophobic “conspiracy theorists”?

If the promoters of this “see no evil” approach hoped that it would appease Moscow, they were clearly naïve about Russia’s leadership. The scent of weakness further emboldens Putin.

But we shouldn’t forget Putin’s near immediate presence at Smolensk to personally oversee the crash scene like a good KGB Lt. Colonel, whose mission was accomplished. In fact, most startling of all should be the gathering that very evening with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, when Vladimir Putin introduced him to his body-double, for which a picture does indeed speak a thousand words.

---

Paweł Styrna has an MA in modern European history from the University of Illinois, and is currently working on an MA in international affairs at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC, where he is a research assistant to the Kościuszko Chair of Polish Studies. Mr. Styrna is also a Eurasia analyst for the Selous Foundation for Public Policy Research and a contributor to SFPPR News & Analysis.

Source: http://sfppr.org/2014/04/is-it-time-to-revisit-putins-role-in-the-smolensk-crash/