Day of Mourning

For those of you that had been reading all of the earlier blog posts, you may know that today, April 10, is the one-year anniversary of the Presidential plane crash in Smolensk, Russia. Even on a day like today, a day that should be filled with mourning and honoring those who have died in the tragic accident, more speculation continues.

A Polish newspaper released an article about more speculations and possibilities about what actually had happened. Among those truths is the fact that the plane which the President was on did not try to land more than once. Black box evidence has proved that the crash occurred on the very first attempt to land the plane at Smolensk Airport.  The most shocking accusation had been made by a Polish politician. Janusz Palikot, had made a very blunt question to the public: Was President Lech Kaczynski sober when he stepped onto the airplane and ordered the pilots to make the landing at Smolenks? This question caused extreme uproar among the Polish public, but among the media speculations arose whether to this could actually be true; after all, the plane did have a 25 minute delay after the scheduled take-off time. The autopsy results prove that the President had been completely sober when on board and at the time of his death. In fact, there was not one trace of alcohol in his system as the results had proven.


Even more suspicious action has occurred throughout this weekend. On Friday night, there had been a Polish plaque made remembering the victims of the plane crash in Smolensk, and also the Katyn massacre which occurred in 1940 when a group of Soviet officials mass murdered a large amount of Polish nationals. Russia has not admitted to the wrong deed until recently, but the events from this weekend have again caused more tension between the countries. After the plaques have been made both in Russian and in Polish, they were both changed overnight by the Russian officials. The following morning the plaques looked nearly identical except for one thing that was missing. What was it? Well, the Russian plaque had absolutely no mention of the Katyn Massacre. Overnight, the Russians have changed the plaque so that only the Smolensk accident would be remembered, which caused Polish officials to attack Russia on their withdrawal of the plaque that included Katyn on them. For those of you who have Netflix, I strongly recommend that you see the movie "Katyn". It's a great movie with very good facts on what actually happened at that scene in 1940.

This issue has really left the country divided. There are some who believe we're just making too big of a deal about this, but there is a pretty valid point made by those that Russia is once again trying to cover up what happened in Katyn.  For a picture time line of what happened at Smolensk you can go here.

Check back either later tonight or tomorrow for a summary of today's events and something that the late President's brother did that shocked much of the public in Poland.