On April 10, 2010, a Tu-154M aircraft crashed while on approach at the Smolensk airfield, with the death of all 96 passengers including Lech Kaczynski, the president of the Republic of Poland. Among the casualties were also his wife, Maria; his entourage; several dignitaries; and top military commanders.
They were on their way to commemorate some 22,000 Polish officers and intelligentsia systematically massacred by the Soviets in and around the Katyn Forest in 1941.
Almost immediately, Russian authorities blamed pilot incompetency for the crash, pointing out that the left wing of the plane hit a birch tree resulting in loss of control. There was an additional allegation that General Andrzej Blasik, the Polish Air Force commander-in-chief, was under the influence of alcohol and pressured the pilot to land in spite of dangerous, foggy conditions.
The allegation against Blasik was based on a post-mortem assessment of alcohol levels, which was invalid because of biochemical changes that occur in the body after death.
The Polish government at the time handed over the investigation entirely to the Russian Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK). With the purported cause declared at the outset, no objective consideration was given to other possibilities—particularly sabotage.
