April 10, 2013 marks three years since the death of the Tu-154 aircraft of Polish President Lech Kaczynski near Smolensk.
The disaster continues to influence Russian-Polish relations to this day, its causes have become the subject of endless anti-Russian speculations by a number of Polish politicians. But it is possible that a whole chain of mystical coincidences led to the tragedy. Otherwise, many points simply cannot be explained.
Version one. Georgians jinxed …
Literally a month before the tragedy, a provocative story was broadcast on the Imedi Georgian TV channel. It described how Georgia was subjected to Russian aggression. Upon learning of this, Lech Kaczynski immediately flew to Tbilisi, but on the way his plane allegedly exploded in the air. When on April 10, 2010 the Polish leader did not really get to Katyn, someone said: "The Georgians jinxed him."
It is noteworthy that once the Georgian leadership played out Pan Kaczynski. In autumn 2008, he arrived in Transcaucasia on a visit, and his colleague Mikhail Saakashvili took the guest closer to the border of South Ossetia. On the way, their motorcade was fired upon, and the Georgian side blamed the Russian troops for everything. But it quickly became clear that the shelling had become a theatrical staging of the Georgian side.
After that, the offended Kaczynski lost some interest in Saakashvili, although before that he had vehemently denounced the "Russian aggressor". And not in vain - in the end it turned out that Georgians truly became the evil geniuses of the Polish president …
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Second version. The plane has warned more than once …
A chain of strange incidents followed Kaczynski's plane. So, on August 12, 2008, the Polish president wanted to go to Tbilisi at any cost. However, the pilot flatly refused due to bad weather and landed the plane in Baku, and it took several hours to drive to the capital of Georgia by car. The obstinate pilot was fired, but two years later it became clear that he may have saved many lives.
The adventures of the presidential Tu-154 continued. So, at the end of 2008, the ill-fated plane froze over in Mongolia, where Kaczynski arrived on a visit. In September 2009, Kaczynski had to fly to the United States on a regular scheduled flight. It turned out that two government aircraft were out of order at once. But the Polish leader did not attach importance to all the signs of fate. As a result, 10.4.2010 happened.
Third version. Payback for callousness and gloating
Just a couple of weeks before the disaster, Russia experienced its own tragedy. On March 29, 2010, two suicide bombers exploded in the Moscow metro, killing 40 people. Many Polish newspapers wrote about this with ill-concealed gloating, openly justifying the actions of the terrorists. Lech Kaczynski himself did not find words of sympathy either, who, when he was mayor of Warsaw, named one of the city's squares after Dzhokhar Dudaev.
Another incident came to mind here. Thus, in the fall of 1999, after the start of the Second Chechen War, a crowd broke into the territory of the Russian consulate in the Polish city of Poznan and tore off the flag shouting "Shamil Basayev!" When Chechen terrorist number one was killed, some politicians and public figures of Poland openly mourned him. As a result, sympathy for the murderers and terrorists backfired on Poland with a terrible tragedy near Smolensk …
Version four. Cursed Katyn Forest
The fatal flight of the Tu-154 could not have happened at all. The fact is that on April 7, 2010, a joint Russian-Polish ceremony of commemoration of the Polish citizens who were shot there was held in the Katyn Forest. It was attended by Prime Ministers Vladimir Putin and Donald Tusk. The level is more than sufficient … Moreover, Kaczynski's mother fell ill, and his twin brother Yaroslav stayed with her and refused to travel to Smolensk. There were enough reasons to cancel the flight, but Lech could not afford this.
But Katyn, this Polish Golgotha, meant too much to the radical anti-communist and Russophobe Kaczynski. He visited there in 2007, but a private visit is one thing, and the 70th anniversary of memorable events is quite another. I had to organize a special ceremony especially for him, where many Polish politicians and historians would come with him. Didn't arrive. The plane crashed and Golgotha became double. Truly, the Katyn Forest is a cursed place for Poles.
Fifth version. Do not bend under Putin and Lukashenko
Kaczynski's relationship with Russian leaders did not work out. The Polish president demonstratively did not want to meet with Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. They say, let them first come to Warsaw and ask for forgiveness for all the evil that Russia has done to Poland throughout history. There was a possibility of boarding one of the Moscow airports, but Moscow is the capital of evil Russia, a stronghold of Poland's enemies. You can't go there …
There were other options for landing the presidential board, except for the fog-covered Smolensk. These are the airports of Minsk and Vitebsk, and it is a stone's throw from Belarus to Katyn. But could Kaczynski sit down in Belarus? Alyaksandr Lukashenka was a personal enemy for him, against whom he was going to go “on a crusade” back in 2005. The Polish president did not give up his principles, did not land the plane in Moscow and Belarus. And he killed himself and another 95 people.
Sixth version. Too Much Historical Speculation
Lech Kaczynski clearly stood out against the background of most European politicians. Most of his colleagues are pragmatists who prefer to talk about economics, current affairs, and the future. For the Polish president, history, settling scores with Poland's neighbors and restoring the once trampled justice (of course, in his understanding) were too important.
Take the eastern direction of Polish foreign policy. The Poles did not like the Nord Stream gas pipeline, and the decision to build it was more than once compared to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. With the participation of the Polish authorities, the Russian exposition in Auschwitz was closed in 2007. This is because the inhabitants of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, annexed to the USSR in 1939, were called Soviet citizens, and not “residents of the territories illegally taken away from Poland”.
Kaczynski's relations with Germany were also not easy. So, he did not like it when Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to open the Museum of the Exiles in Berlin, which would tell about the plight of ethnic Germans who were expelled from Poland and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe after World War II. The Polish president has threatened to open a Museum of German Occupation in Warsaw. In addition, Kaczynski said that if it were not for the Germans, the population of Poland would be 65 million today, and it would be the second power in the European Union.
The Polish president lived by myths, constantly turning to the affairs of bygone days. And on a historic day, near a historical place for the Poles, his life was cut short …
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It is hardly surprising that the death of Kaczynski has also become a myth, while the causes of the tragedy near Smolensk have been the subject of endless insinuations of anti-Russian Polish politicians for three years now. Supporters of the late president predominate among them, with his twin brother Yaroslav remaining the most prominent figure. And here there is already no mysticism. The lover of political and historical speculation in most cases is surrounded by the same associates.