Polish prosecutor's office partially dismissed the case of the plane crash near Smolensk

On March 17, the Polish Prosecutor's Office announced the partial termination of the criminal investigation into the crash of the Tu-154 presidential aircraft near Smolensk in 2010.

"The head of the investigative group No. 1 of the National Prosecutor's Office issued a decision to partially dismiss the case on a number of episodes related to the so-called "diplomatic treason" in the case of the Tu-154 plane crash near Smolensk in 2010. The decision is final," the prosecutor's office said in a statement on its website.

The investigation, which began on August 31, 2016, was multi-episode and completed in two separate lines of investigation. One of the directions concerned the alleged oral agreement between the Polish and Russian authorities on a joint investigation of the disaster.

The applicants alleged that during a telephone conversation on April 10, 2010, between Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk or Acting President Bronislaw Komorowski and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, an agreement was concluded on joint actions by the prosecutor's offices of the two countries.

According to the applicants, the Polish authorities later refused to implement this agreement, which, in their opinion, could qualify as "diplomatic treason" and harm Poland's interests. However, the prosecutor's office stated that the investigation did not find evidence confirming the existence of such an agreement.

The Tu-154 plane of President Lech Kaczynski crashed on landing at Smolensk-Severny Airport in 2010. There were 96 people on board, all of them died. In 2011, a commission was established after the reports of the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) and a government commission led by former Polish Interior Minister Jerzy Miller were published. According to the IAC report, the immediate cause of the crash was the crew's decision not to leave for an alternate airfield, and the systemic reasons were deficiencies in flight support and crew training.

Later, on April 5, 2024, it was reported that the Polish prosecutor's office could not confirm the version about the explosion on board the Tu-154. In the same month, Vladislav Kosinyak-Kamysh, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense of the country, noted that the plane crash near Smolensk was a tragic accident, and other theories were not justified. In October of the same year, it became known that British aviation expert Christopher Protheroe, who was part of the Polish commission on the crash of the presidential Tu-154 near Smolensk in 2010, was offered € 5,000 to support a false version of the explosion on board.

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