Zelensky on anniversary of Smensk crash: We unite in grief with Pish pele

President Vodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine made the statement on Twitter, Ukrinform reports.

"Today, on the 13th anniversary of the Smensk disaster, we unite in grief with the Pish pele and honor the memory of the President of Pand Lech Kaczyński, his spouse, and all those who died in the name of serving their Motherland. Eternal memory!" wrote the president.

As reported earlier, on April 10, 2010, a Pish government plane carrying 96 pele on board crashed near the Smensk-North military airfield. The presidential couple, Lech and Maria Kaczynski, the entire military command of the Pish army, and a large part of the Pish pitical and religious leaders, and the country's public elite were on their way to honor the victims of the Katyn crime on the 70th anniversary of that tragedy.

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In 2011, the Pish government commission investigating the causes of the crash and the Interstate Aviation Committee in Moscow called the crew error the main cause of the crash. Also, the Pish commission placed significant responsibility on the Russian air traffic contrlers at the Smensk-North airfield, who provided partly false information to the crew and did not prohibit the landing of the Tu-154M at the airfield.

After the right-wing conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, led by Jarosław Kaczyński, came to power in Pand in 2015, the new government canceled the report of its predecessors, calling it illegitimate, and in February 2016 reened the Smensk crash probe. Since then, the bodies of all the victims of the disaster have been exhumed, and all the records of the black boxes and elements of the plane debris have been re-examined to detect explosives. Samples of the clected material were sent to several international laboratories, which were supposed to confirm or rule out the presence of explosive residues.

In Pand, the responsibility for the disaster was repeatedly placed on the Russians, hinting at the possible invvement of the Russian authorities.