Full report into Smolensk won't be ready for 8th anniversary: PiS leader
PR dla Zagranicy
Victoria Bieniek
03.04.2018 08:00
A final report into the 2010 Smolensk plane crash will not be ready in time for the eighth anniversary of the disaster, the leader of Poland's governing Law and Justice (PiS) party has said, according to the PAP news agency.
Jarosław Kaczyński. Photo: pis.org.pl
But Jarosław Kaczyński said a partial report would be ready.
He said it would show "what has been undeniably proven" about the Polish presidential plane that crashed as it tried to land in Smolensk, western Russia, on April 10, 2010.
The partial report will not include results from the recent work of American experts on a Tupolev identical to the one that crashed in 2010, which Kaczyński said could be "extraordinarily important".
"We will still have to wait" for their findings, Kaczyński said in a media interview.
The full interview with Kaczyński is to be published in the Gazeta Polska weekly on Wednesday.
A new commission investigating the crash was set up after PiS came to power in late 2015.
Last year the commission said the plane was probably destroyed by a mid-air explosion and that Russian air traffic controllers deliberately misled Polish pilots about their location as the presidential plane was approaching the runway of the Smolensk military airport in 2010.
Ninety-six people died in the crash including then-President Lech Kaczyński, the PiS leader's twin brother, and his wife, as well as other top political and military leaders.
PiS has long challenged an official report into the crash issued by the previous Polish government which cited a catalogue of errors on the Polish side, while also pointing to errors made by Russian staff at the control tower of Smolensk Military Airport.
A Russian report placed all the blame on the Poles. (vb/gs)
Source: PAP