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Polish authorities have now received reports from the Russian coroner's service presiding over the autopsies of the 96 bodies pulled from the doomed presidential plane that crashed over Smolensk on April 10.
Rzeczpospolita journalists got their hands on copies of three autopsy reports and find the time of death entered by the coroner of some curiosity.
According to the documents, the people died at 8:50 am. But the plane's black boxes reportedly stopped recording at 8:41 am and medical personnel didn't arrive at the crash site until after 9 am. This raises questions over how the 8:50 am time of death was determined.
Pictures of Russian military and militiamen, who a few hours after the tragedy at the airport exchange Smolensk headlamps and light bulbs in lamps indicating the location of aircraft from the runway
Mistakes by the crew caused the crash of the Polish presidential plane near the western Russian town of Smolensk in April, Poland's envoy to the investigation said in his report on the accident.
Edmund Klich, who heads the Polish air accident investigations commission, examined recordings on the plane's black boxes and conversations between the crew members.
"The pilots ignored all danger warnings shown by the aircraft's automatic controls, and took an undue risk. Why? Because they were trained to do so," Klich told Rech Pospolita newspaper.
The newspaper said that, although the air crash investigation is not yet complete, Klich has already placed the blame for the accident on the crew.
"I will take the risk and be responsible for this. I think society should know," he said.
Klich earlier said non-crew members were in the cockpit of the crashed plane, including Polish Air Force Commander Andrzej Blasik, who wanted to "find out what was going on" just minutes before the tragedy.
Media reports said that the Foreign Ministry's chief protocol officer was also in the cockpit.
Originally posted by bigbomb456
Great thread....now how do the Russians fit into all this? I read a while back something about a pipeline through Poland that the recent president opposed, but that Tusk was favorable towards...Have you looked into this possible angle?
- Source
Polish defence minister Radek Sikorski at a transatlantic conference in Brussels on Sunday (30 April) compared the pipeline to the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, named after the Soviet and Nazi foreign ministers who divided Poland in a secret protocol.
"Poland certainly does not understand the Nord Stream project. What is the economic rationale for a decision whose outcome is a much more expensive transit of gas than by the traditional land route? For me, Nord Stream is an example of a lack of energy solidarity," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said last month in an interview with Financial Times.
The pipeline is backed by the European Commission as a "priority" project aimed at diversifying not only sources of energy but also routes. This alludes to what several Nord Stream supporters claim – that by avoiding Ukraine, EU-Russian relations will run smoothly and gas disruptions like the ones in 2006 and 2009 will no longer happen.
Tusk mentioned one more problem in bilateral relations. Warsaw may "adjust its position" on oil and gas supplies. He meant primarily Yaroslaw Kaczynski's decision to build a terminal on the Baltic coast - in the event that Moscow stops gas supplies via the Yamal-Europe pipeline. The prime minister did not promise to give up the plans for its construction but said that he "will be seeking a solution in Polish interests and will consider political aspects of relations with the neighbors."
In foreign affairs he echoed Polish nationalist tradition of suspicion of both Russia and Germany. He had angered the former even as Minister of Justice when, in December 2000, he ordered that prosecutors investigate a mysterious high-tech telecommunications cable that Russia’s Gazprom has laid along its gas pipeline across Poland. Moscow took much greater offence when he agreed that the US could locate part of its planned anti- ballistic missile system in Poland. Kaczynski made further concessions to Washington when he stated that under certain circumstances Polish troops could continue their stabilisation mission in Iraq.
There were tensions at home, too. As has frequently happened in independent Poland, the president and the prime minister have leant in opposite directions, and when Donald Tusk became Prime Minister in November 2007 there was noticeable friction between him and Kaczynski. Kaczynski’s nationalism perhaps fitted ill with the post-nationalist construct of the EU...
Polish officials will try to improve the quality of cockpit recordings of the plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski over the next two weeks before deciding whether to release them, Interior Minister Jerzy Miller said.
Miller made the comments a day after Poland released a transcript showing that pilots of the Polish Air Force Tupolev- 154 received eight automated “pull up” warnings in the minute before the April 10 crash at an airfield in Smolensk, Russia. “The transcript doesn’t provide an answer to very many questions and doubts,” Miller said in an interview published today in the Warsaw newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.
......
After receiving two automated “pull up” warnings from the plane’s Terrain Awareness and Warning System, the co-pilot gave the order “we’re aborting,” 15 seconds before the crash.
It isn’t clear why the plane kept descending at this point, General Anatol Czaban, head of training for the Polish Air Force, said today in an interview with Radio ZET.
“The order ‘we’re aborting’ is unambiguous,” Czaban said. “You increase engine revs and climb, no matter who gives the order. Perhaps the fault lies with a failure of the airplane to respond” to the controls, he said. “The evidence provided by the transcript is inadequate, we don’t know.”