Polish PM Cancels Memorial Trip For Presidential Jet Crash

Warsaw, April 3 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 3rd Apr, 2020 ) :Poland's prime minister on Friday cancelled a memorial visit to Russia marking 10 years since the Polish presidential jet crashed near the western city of Smolensk, killing all aboard including then-president Lech Kaczynski.

"The decision was made overnight to postpone the date of the visit, which was to take place on April 10, 2020 in Smolensk," Michal Dworczyk, head of the prime minister's chancellery, told state broadcaster TVP Info.

He said the move was dictated by the COVID-19 lockdown in place both in Poland and Russian to stem the spread of the deadly disease.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki had been due to head government and parliamentary delegations to pay respect to the 96 people who perished when the Russian-made Tupolev Tu-154 presidential jet crashed on landing in thick fog at an air field near Smolensk in 2010.

The disaster occurred as the top-level presidential delegation was heading to a commemoration in Russia's Katyn forest for some 22,000 Polish army officers killed by Soviet secret police in 1940 -- a massacre the Kremlin denied until 1990.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the powerful leader of Poland's governing right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, who is also the late president's identical twin brother, has long insisted the crash was no accident.

Kaczynski has accused the liberal Civic Platform (PO) opposition party of being "morally responsible" for the crash, but has failed to provide convincing evidence to back his claims.

An official investigation in the wake of the crash conducted under the previous PO government blamed bad weather, errors by the Polish pilots and Russian air traffic controllers for the disaster.