A politician with a special attitude towards Russia died. Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski

April 10 marked three years since the death of the Tu-154 plane of Polish President Lech Kaczynski near Smolensk.
The disaster still continues to influence Russian-Polish relations; its causes have become the subject of endless anti-Russian speculation by a number of Polish politicians. But it is possible that a whole chain of mystical coincidences led to the tragedy. Otherwise, many moments simply cannot be explained. Version one. Georgians have jinxed...

Literally a month before the tragedy, a provocative story was aired on the Georgian TV channel Imedi. It described how Georgia was subjected to Russian aggression. Having learned about this, Lech Kaczynski immediately flew to Tbilisi, but on his way his plane allegedly exploded in the air. When the Polish leader actually did not reach Katyn on April 10, 2010, someone said: “The Georgians have jinxed it.”

It is noteworthy that once the Georgian leadership played a prank on Mr. Kaczynski. In the fall of 2008, he arrived in Transcaucasia on a visit, and his colleague Mikheil Saakashvili took the guest closer to the border of South Ossetia. On the way, their motorcade was fired upon, and the Georgian side blamed Russian troops for everything. But it quickly became clear that the shelling was a theatrical staging by the Georgian side.

After this, the offended Kaczynski somewhat cooled towards Saakashvili, although before that he had fiercely denounced the “Russian aggressor”. And not in vain - after all, in the end it turned out that the Georgians truly became the evil geniuses of the Polish president...

Version two. The plane warned more than once...

A chain of strange incidents followed Kaczynski’s plane. So, on August 12, 2008, the Polish president wanted to land in Tbilisi at any cost. However, the pilot flatly refused due to bad weather and landed the plane in Baku, and had to travel several hours by car to the capital of Georgia. 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 became icy in Mongolia, where Kaczynski arrived on a visit. In September 2009, Kaczynski had to fly on a regular scheduled flight for a visit to the United States. 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, it happened on April 10, 2010.

Version three. 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 poorly hidden gloating, openly justifying the actions of the terrorists. There were no words of sympathy from Lech Kaczynski himself, who, when he was mayor of Warsaw, named one of the city squares after Dzhokhar Dudayev.

Here I remember another incident. Thus, in the fall of 1999, after the outbreak of the Second Chechen War, a crowd burst into the territory of the Russian consulate in the Polish city of Poznan and tore down the flag shouting “Shamil Basayev!” When the number one Chechen terrorist was destroyed, some politicians and public figures in Poland openly mourned him. As a result, sympathy for murderers and terrorists backfired on Poland with a terrible tragedy near Smolensk...

Version four. Damned Katyn Forest

The fateful flight of the Tu-154 might not have happened at all. The fact is that on April 7, 2010, a joint Russian-Polish ceremony was held in the Katyn Forest to commemorate the Polish citizens shot there. Prime ministers Vladimir Putin and Donald Tusk took part in it. The level is more than sufficient... In addition, Kaczynski’s mother fell ill, and his twin brother Yaroslav stayed with her and refused to go to Smolensk. There were plenty of reasons to cancel the flight, but Lech couldn’t afford it.

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. It was necessary to organize a separate ceremony especially for him, where many Polish politicians and historians would arrive with him. Didn't arrive. The plane crashed, and Golgotha ​​became double. Truly, the Katyn Forest is a cursed place for Poles.

Version five. Don't bend to Putin and Lukashenko

Relations with Russian leaders did not work out for Kaczynski. The Polish president pointedly 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 caused to Poland throughout history. There was the possibility of the plane leaving for one of the Moscow airports, but Moscow is the capital of evil Russia, a stronghold of the enemies of Poland. You can't go there...

There were other options where the presidential plane could be landed, besides fog-covered Smolensk. These are the airports of Minsk and Vitebsk, and from Belarus to Katyn is just a stone’s throw away. But could Kaczynski have landed in Belarus? Alexander Lukashenko was a personal enemy for him, against whom he was going to go on a “crusade” back in 2005. The Polish president did not compromise on his principles and did not land the plane in Moscow and Belarus. And he killed himself and 95 other people.

Version six. Too much historical speculation

Lech Kaczynski clearly stood out from most European politicians. Most of his colleagues are pragmatists who prefer to talk about the economy, current affairs, and the future. For the Polish president, history, settling scores with Poland’s neighbors and restoring the once violated justice (of course, in his understanding) were too important.

Let's 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 territories illegally seized from Poland.”

Kaczynski’s relations with Germany were also difficult. Thus, he did not like it when Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to open the Museum of the Exiled in Berlin, which would tell about the plight of ethnic Germans expelled from Poland and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe after World War II. The Polish president threatened to open a Museum of the German Occupation in Warsaw. In addition, Kaczynski said that if it were not for the Germans, the population of Poland today would be 65 million, and it would be the second power of the European Union.

The Polish president lived in myths and constantly turned to the affairs of bygone days. And on a historic day, near a historical place for the Poles, his life was cut short...

* * *

It is hardly surprising that the death of Kaczynski has also turned into a myth, and the causes of the tragedy near Smolensk have been the subject of endless insinuations by anti-Russian Polish politicians for three years now. Among them, supporters of the late president predominate, and his twin brother Yaroslav remains the most prominent figure. And now there is no mysticism here. A lover of political and historical speculation is in most cases surrounded by the same comrades.

His father, engineer Raimund Kaczynski, was an officer in the Home Army, and his mother, Jadwiga Kaczyncska, was a philologist. At the age of thirteen, in 1962, Lech and his twin brother Yaroslav played the main roles in the popular children's fairy tale film “The Two Who Stole the Moon” in Poland. But Lech did not become an actor, but graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Warsaw and received a master’s degree in 1972. After receiving higher education, Kaczynski moved to Gdańsk, where he took part in the opposition movement, and in 1977 became a member of the Workers' Defense Committee. In 1979 he defended his doctoral dissertation at the University of Gdańsk.

In 1980, Kaczynski became a legal adviser to the inter-factory strike committee in Gdańsk. After the introduction of a state of emergency in the country (1981), he was imprisoned for eleven months, and then headed one of the commissions of the Solidarity trade union, and became one of the associates of Lech Walesa. In the parliamentary elections of 1989, Kaczynski was elected to the Senate, the upper house of the Polish Sejm, and since 1990 he has been a professor at the University of Gdańsk. In the 1990s, he headed the National Security Bureau in the Office of the President of Poland, then the Supreme Court of Control. In 2000-2001, Kaczynski served as Minister of Justice in the government of Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek.

In 2001, the Kaczynski brothers created the political party Law and Justice, which was based on right-wing, conservative political positions. The Kaczynskis advocated the traditional values ​​of Catholic Polish society, defended the national sovereignty of Poland, promoted a close alliance with the United States and Western European countries and the need to actively counter Russia. In November 2002, Lech Kaczynski was elected mayor of Warsaw. In this position, he contributed to the creation of the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Among the decisions of the city administration under the leadership of Kaczynski was the renaming of one of the Warsaw squares into Dzhokhar Dudayev Square.

In October 2005, Lech Kaczynski was elected president of Poland from the Law and Justice party. His campaign slogans were “moral renewal” and a return to “Christian values.” In July 2006, a new government was formed in Poland, headed by Jaroslaw Kaczynski. However, the tandem of brothers in senior government positions did not last long. A corruption scandal in the government forced the Sejm to announce its dissolution and hold early elections in October 2007. They were won by the center-left Civic Platform, led by Donald Tusk, who headed the new government in November 2007.
In foreign policy, Lech Kaczynski generally followed the lead of the United States and certainly supported the American desire to place a missile defense system on Polish territory. Nevertheless, on a number of issues he maintained an independent point of view. In particular, Kaczynski resisted strengthening the powers of the central authorities of the European Union at the expense of national sovereignty. As a Polish nationalist, he traditionally expressed hostility not only towards Russia, but also towards Germany. Despite the commonality of anti-Russian sentiments with the President of Ukraine V.A. Yushchenko, the President of Poland, emphasized the guilt of Ukrainian nationalists in the genocide of the Polish population in Western Ukraine during the Second World War.

The spring of 2010 marked the 70th anniversary of the tragic death of captured Polish officers in Stalin's camps. At the site of the execution of Polish officers in Katyn (Smolensk region), official events were held with the participation of the head of the Polish government, Donald Tusk, and the head of the Russian government, V.V. Putin. Polish President Lech Kaczynski did not want to take part in memorial events with the participation of representatives of the Russian authorities and preferred to make a private visit to Katyn later. He was accompanied by many representatives of the Polish power elite, in particular the leadership of the Polish Army. It was assumed that the plane of the Polish president would land at the Severny military airfield near Smolensk, but the airfield was covered in heavy fog. The Polish plane was recommended to land in Minsk or Moscow, which was unacceptable to Kaczynski. An attempt to land at Severny ended in disaster with the death of all passengers and crew members of the plane.

One of the political figures of modern European society, a fighter for democracy and justice, was the beloved President of Poland, Lech Kaczynski. Unfortunately, his life as a politician was not easy, and his premature and tragic death was a real shock not only for his native country, but also for the general public. Let's try to analyze how the plane crash occurred near Smolensk. The death of Lech Kaczynski was a big blow for everyone.

Biographical information

Lech Kaczynski was born in (Warsaw) on June 18, 1949 into a family of progressives and activists. My father was an engineer and participated in World War II, and my mother, a philologist, was an active participant in the 1944 uprising in Warsaw. Lech was not the only child in the family; moreover, he had a twin brother, Yaroslav.

Education

Lech Kaczynski was always diligent and hardworking, graduated with honors from secondary school and in 1966 entered the Faculty of Administration and Law. Five years later he successfully graduated, and a year later received a master's degree. The active young man never sat still, always participated in the life of the university and the city, set goals and achieved them. So, after just a few years, he defended his doctoral dissertation and soon received the title of professor.

Political career

The political career of the future began within the walls of the University of Gdańsk, in the Workers' Defense Committee. At that time (1977-1978) it was the so-called underground anti-communist opposition. Lech Kaczynski always defended his interests and helped others to do so, so it is not surprising that he was appointed advisor to the Gdańsk Strikes committee.

In the early 1980s, when a state of emergency was declared throughout the country, he was imprisoned for almost a year. But this did not break the fighter for justice, but, on the contrary, it seemed to give him the conviction that he had the power to change the country for the better. Probably, it was then that the plan to build his political career and ascend to the leadership of the country matured, because this is the only way to become useful to society and achieve justice.

For a long time he was the Minister of Justice and was the head of the National Security Bureau (under the President of Poland). In 2001, together with his brother, he created and led a party called “Law and Justice.” In fact, these two words became the slogan and the main vector of movement of this political force, which after just a year led Lech first to the post of mayor of Warsaw, and after another 4 years - to the presidency of the country. In 2005, the whole world learned: “Lech Kaczynski is the President of Poland.”

Core views and values

The new president of Poland called for democracy and defended it in every possible way, but at the same time tried to return Christian principles and the ancient morality of his ancestors to public life. Thus, while still mayor, he was not only openly against same-sex marriage and sexual minorities, but also repeatedly banned the holding of such parades in Warsaw. President Kaczynski also opposed abortion and euthanasia, but at the same time supported the death penalty as a preventive measure for especially dangerous criminals.

Many believed that after winning the elections, the state was led not by one person, but by the whole Kaczynski couple. And this is not surprising, because there was always a brother nearby, who not only led the largest political party in the Senate, but later even became the prime minister.

In modern European society, the figure of Kaczynski is considered by many to be quite ambiguous. And this is primarily due to the tension in relations with the Russian Federation due to the tragedy in Katyn and the construction of the Baltic gas pipeline. In addition, a significant factor in assessing the ambiguity of Kaczynski’s policy was probably his assessment of the actions of the Russian Federation during the events in South Ossetia, as well as his expression of deep support for the Georgian government.

It is possible that the signing of the declaration in 2008 on the admission of Ukraine and Georgia to NATO played a certain role in Kaczynski. In addition, Lev Kaczynski approved the deployment of US missile defense systems on Polish territory, which caused misunderstanding on the part of the Russian Federation. At that time, Dmitry Medvedev unequivocally promised that the Russian Federation would deploy the Iskander system on the territory of the Kaliningrad region. And who knew how Lech Kaczynski would die a few years later. The crash of the airliner, on which the entire governing elite of the country would be present, was a complete surprise.

Mysterious death

On the morning of April 10, 2010, a terrible plane crash occurred near Smolensk. The death of Lech Kaczynski was a real tragedy. On board, in addition to the President of Poland, there were 95 more people, including his wife and the “top” of the state (deputies and senators). Unfortunately, not a single person managed to survive.

According to official data, the plane crashed only 300 meters from the runway of one of the military airfields of the Russian Federation - Severny. It is believed that for unknown reasons, in conditions of very poor visibility due to fog, the plane was aimed at landing and during approach hit a tree, which was the reason for its fall. Almost immediately, the President of the Russian Federation ordered the creation of a group to investigate the causes of Kaczynski’s crash.

According to eyewitnesses, there was no fire or any other ignition on board. But the impact force of the plane during the fall was so great that at one moment the tail section of the plane came off, leaving not the slightest chance to save the passengers.

Plane crash near Smolensk

The plane crash at Severny Airport looks quite mysterious. Perhaps it is for this reason that the death of Lech Kaczynski has become the most discussed incident. There were more questions than answers in this disaster. The public was perplexed as to how this could even happen and what or who was really behind this disaster: a tragic coincidence or carefully planned actions?

According to official data, the plane carrying the Polish President did not receive permission to land. On that day, Yuzhny Airport was even closed. The crew was repeatedly recommended to land in Minsk or Moscow, but despite this, the board made several landing approaches in the area of ​​Smolensk airport. A disaster has occurred.

In view of the current unfavorable situation, it was planned to land the airliner, on board which were the top officials of the state, on the runway of the Smolensk Severny airport. According to city residents, this airport is a rather old strategic military structure that has not been operational for a long time. However, it was here that, after refusing to follow the proposed course, an attempt was made to land the president’s airliner.

According to “certain” people, this airport was indeed in “limbo”. Among the personnel who took part in maintaining the airport, there were only a few employees who were involved in maintaining the runway in proper technical condition. According to them, despite the fact that the airport is located in close proximity to the city, planes very rarely land on this runway. And authorized representatives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation in their official statement indicated that the airport is in working order and functioning properly. And it was to this airport that Lech Kaczynski flew in 2007 to visit the Katyn memorial.

Funeral

This is how Lech Kaczynski died (for obvious reasons we cannot publish a photo of the body). But the burial procedure was comprehensively covered in the media. And what's interesting. When looking at photographs of a funeral procession, there is definitely a feeling of déjà vu. How is it that Kaczynski seems to have died, but it seems like here he is, walking among the funeral procession? This is his twin brother.

Historical data: analysis of TU-154 performance

Let's look at why Lech Kaczynski died? The plane crash that occurred over Smolensk - a pattern or a coincidence? Some readers may have a subjective opinion as to why the airliner crashed. However, you should not rely on the absolute reliability of these machines. Since 2001, these aircraft have been plagued by a series of accidents. An example is 2001, when a plane flying from Tehran to the city of Yerevan crashed. According to the final results of the investigation, all 153 people died, and according to experts, the cause of the plane’s crash was pilot error.

Three more plane crashes occurred in 2001. According to the investigation, 145, 136 and 78 people were killed, including crew members. At the same time, as the newswire reports, the reason for the crash of airliners in two cases was the error of the crew and pilots, and only in one case did the crash of the plane occur due to the fact that the latter was allegedly shot down by a missile during a military exercise.

In 2002, two occurred. The first of them occurred, as the expert opinion states, due to a technical malfunction. But the second crash occurred, apparently, due to an error by air traffic controllers or the aircraft’s automation, since there was a collision with a Boeing at an altitude of 12 thousand meters.

With this, we can say, the disasters of the 154th ended, except for the situation that occurred during the takeoff of flights on August 24, 2004. At that moment, on board the planes in the air from the Siberia and Volga - Aviaexpress airlines, two explosive devices, carried on board by suicide passengers, went off almost simultaneously. As a result of the disaster, all passengers died (46 and 44 people, respectively).

In 2006, due to entering a thunderstorm front, a TU-154 plane crashed while flying from Anapa to St. Petersburg. After the plane lost control, it went into a flat spin and crashed. All passengers on the flight died (169 people, of which 49 were children and 10 crew members).

Of course, the question of the flight crash over Smolensk remains open, as does how Lech Kaczynski died. According to the results of the first information received, the crash seemed to be due to the fault of the pilots. One gets the impression that the TU-154 pilots are insufficiently qualified and simply “do not know how” to fly these machines, since all the disasters occurred precisely through the fault of the crew. Or perhaps the control of these aircraft is complex enough for a simple civil aviation pilot to fly them? The third point that can be voiced is that it is possible that the aircraft’s automation does not sufficiently work out the control algorithms embedded in it, or they are ineffective in critical situations.

Memory of the people

One should not think that the people, even of another state, immediately forgot the politician and leader of Poland. Four days after the plane crash, a street named after Lech Kaczynski appeared in Ukraine. Odessa thus expressed its condolences over the disaster and honored the memory of the leader of the Polish state. It must be said that this was not an ostentatious action, but an almost unanimous decision of the deputies of the Odessa City Council, which found support in the voices of ordinary citizens - city residents.

], moved to the city of Sopot in Eastern Pomerania and became a researcher at the University of Gdańsk, continued to work there until 1997. In 1980 he defended his doctoral dissertation on labor law.

Kaczynski began his political career with his brother in 1977 in the Workers' Defense Committee, the predecessor organization of the Solidarity union (Solidarnosc). In 1980, he was delegated to the first congress of Solidarity. In August 1980, he actively participated in the strike movement in Gdansk, and was an adviser on legal issues to the inter-factory strike committee of the city. After the introduction of a state of emergency in the country, he was imprisoned for eleven months. Upon his release, he continued to participate in trade union activities as one of the closest associates of Lech Walesa, the future President of Poland (1990-1995). He was a member of various leadership structures of Solidarity: from 1983 to 1984 he headed one of the commissions, then he was a representative of Solidarity in Gdansk, in 1988 he became the secretary of the All-Polish commission, in 1989 - a member of its presidium.

In 1988, Kaczynski became a member of the Walesa Citizens' Committee. In June 1989, he was elected to the Senate. In 1990, he was appointed first deputy chairman of Solidarity. In 1991, he was elected to the Sejm with the support of the "Agreement of Centrist Forces" party (Porozumienie Centrum). In the same year, he headed the National Security Bureau in the Office of the President of Poland. From 1992 to 1995 he headed the Central Audit Commission (Najwyzsza Izba Kontroli, NIK).

In the 1990s, a rift occurred between the Kaczynski brothers and Walesa, associated, in particular, with the latter’s reluctance to remove old communist cadres from the country’s leadership. In 1995, former communist Aleksander Kwasniewski became president, and Kaczynski temporarily returned to scientific and teaching work. From 2000 to 2001, he served as Minister of Justice in the government of Jerzy Buzek. Advocating for stricter criminal legislation, he became one of the most popular members of the cabinet.

In April 2001, together with his brother, he created the conservative political party Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc, PiS) and was elected its chairman. In September of the same year, the party received 9.5 percent of the vote in the parliamentary elections, and Kaczynski again became a deputy, leading the right-wing opposition in the Sejm. In November 2002, he was elected president (mayor) of Warsaw by an overwhelming majority of votes. He began working in this position by declaring war on corruption - the so-called “Warsaw connections”. Show trials of corrupt officials took place in the city. Among the decisions of the city administration under the leadership of Kaczynski was the renaming of one of Warsaw's squares into a square named after the leader of the Chechen separatists and the first president of Chechnya, Dzhokhar Dudayev. Kaczynski himself called the creation of the Museum of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 his main achievement as mayor.

In March 2005, Kaczynski officially announced his intention to run for the presidency of Poland. His election campaign proclaimed an orientation toward traditional Catholic values ​​and used nationalist slogans directed, in particular, against Russia and Germany. On September 25, the PiS party won the parliamentary elections with 26.99 percent of the votes. Logically, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who replaced his brother at the head of the party in 2003, should have headed the government, but on the eve of the elections he chose to go into the shadows so as not to distract voters from Lech. The “inconspicuous” party functionary Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz became prime minister.

After the 2005 presidential elections, critics noted that Poland was effectively under the leadership of the Kaczynski twins: Lech led the state, and Jaroslaw, as the leader of the dominant party in the Sejm, could control the legislature and government. Later, on July 14, 2006, the President appointed Jarosław Kaczynski as Prime Minister. By this time, observers noted significant tension in Poland's relations with its Western EU partners. At the same time, Poland acted as a committed US ally and was considered the most likely location for a US missile defense (BMD) base. Predictions about the deterioration of Polish-Russian relations also turned out to be justified. On November 15, 2006, Kaczynski proposed that the EU impose sanctions against Russia if Moscow refuses to lift the ban on the import of Polish meat and agricultural products. In addition, Poland vetoed the start of negotiations on cooperation between the European Union and Russia, which were supposed to begin at the Russia-EU summit on November 24, . As a result, negotiations were never launched.

In July 2007, at the insistence of his brother Jaroslaw, Lech Kaczynski dismissed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture Andrzej Lepper, who was allegedly involved in a corruption scandal. Lepper categorically denied his guilt. Although he promised to keep his Samoobrona party in the government coalition, the scandal escalated further when the media published reports that the deputy prime minister's resignation was the result of a provocation by Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

In October 2007, early parliamentary elections were held in Poland, in which PiS won 32.11 percent of the vote and lost victory to Tusk's Civic Platform. According to experts, Tusk was supposed to replace Jaroslaw Kaczynski as head of government. On November 5, 2007, Yaroslav resigned, and Lech had to lead the country for the remaining three years of his presidential term without the support of his brother, the prime minister.

During the war in South Ossetia in August 2008, Kaczynski announced that he fully supported Georgia, and called Russia’s entry of troops an aggression against a sovereign country and a manifestation of Russian imperialism. According to him, “the Russian state has once again shown its true face.” On August 13, Kaczynski, together with the presidents of Lithuania Valdas Adamkus, Estonia Toomas Ilves, Latvia Valdis Zatlers and Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko, visited the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi. Kaczynski's position displeased Prime Minister Tusk: he noted that such statements could worsen relations with Russia, a conflict with which is not in Poland's interests. On 18 August 2008, Kaczynski and Adamkus signed a joint declaration requesting the admission of Ukraine and Georgia to NATO.

Against the backdrop of the South Ossetian conflict, Poland signed a preliminary agreement with the United States on August 14, 2008, and a final agreement on August 20 on the deployment of elements of the American missile defense system on its territory. Russia's representative to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, condemned the move, describing it as anti-Russian. On August 21, the Russian Ministry of Defense officially notified NATO of the temporary suspension of military cooperation with the alliance.

After the end of the conflict in South Ossetia, Poland agreed with the United States on the deployment of missile defense elements - interceptor missiles - on its territory. In response, in November 2008, Russian President Medvedev announced that Russia would deploy the Iskander missile system in the Kaliningrad region.

At the end of November 2008, Kaczynski visited Georgia to take part in the celebration of the next anniversary of the Rose Revolution. The program of the visit included a visit, together with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, to the border area near South Ossetia, during which, as the presidents later stated, their motorcade was fired upon, but there were no casualties. Kaczynski stated that he heard Russian speech in the positions from which shots were heard, but then asked not to blame anyone for the incident. The Russian side denied the fact of the shelling, the South Ossetian military confirmed only the fact of a “single shot in the air,” and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the statements of the presidents of Georgia and Poland a provocation. According to the presidents of Georgia and Poland, this incident proved a violation of President Sarkozy's peace plan, which provided for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgian territory. In connection with the incident, the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs opened a criminal case and accused Russia of terrorism.

Subsequently, the head of the South Ossetian Information and Press Committee, Irina Gagloeva, reported that the presidents' motorcade approached the Ossetian border post and the Ossetian military fired warning shots, after which the motorcade turned around and left the border territory. In Poland itself, some political scientists said that Kaczynski himself put his life in danger by agreeing to travel “into the unknown,” and experts called the trip to the border region an irresponsible act on the part of Saakashvili or even accused the Georgian side of staging the entire incident.

In September 2009, US President Barack Obama announced that the United States had abandoned plans to deploy a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. Then, as an explanation for this decision of the American side, Kaczynski cited mistakes made in negotiations with the United States by Tusk, while many Polish politicians laid the blame on Kaczynski himself and his anti-Russian policy.

On April 10, 2010, the President of Poland died in a plane crash while he and a delegation were heading to Katyn to participate in memorial events. Kaczynski's plane hit a tree while landing at the Smolensk airfield and caught fire; there were no survivors from the crash. It was reported that the Speaker of the Sejm, Bronislaw Komorowski, became acting president. On the same day, Komorowski announced seven days of national mourning for the victims; the mourning was subsequently extended for another day. On April 18, Lech Kaczynski and his wife were buried in Krakow, at Wawel Castle, next to the graves of the Polish kings and Jozef Pilsudski.

In January 2011, a report by the Interstate Aviation Committee was made public in Moscow, according to which the cause of the accident was the decision of the aircraft crew not to leave for an alternate airfield in bad weather conditions and psychological pressure on the pilots of the Polish Air Force Commander-in-Chief Andrzej Blasik. Polish Prime Minister Tusk agreed with the committee's main findings, but said they did not include data on the condition of the Smolensk airfield and the performance of air traffic controllers, and Lech Kaczynski's brother Jaroslaw called the report a joke aimed at Poland.

The President of Poland was married to Maria Kaczynska; she and her husband died in a plane crash. They are survived by their daughter Marta and granddaughter Ewa.

Used materials

Maria Chupina. Tusk called the IAC report incomplete, but acknowledged the Poles' responsibility for the disaster. - Voice of Russia, 13.01.2011

Dmitry Minenko. IAC named the main reasons for the crash of the Polish Tu-154 near Smolensk. - RIA News, 12.01.2011

Lidia Kelly. Crew under pressure to land Kaczynski plane: Russia. - Reuters, 12.01.2011

Polish president buried in state. - BBC News, 18.04.2010

Rafal Romanowski. Na Wawelu, ale nie z Piłsudskim. - Gazeta Wyborcza, 15.04.2010

Derek Scally. Mixed reaction to Kaczynski burial plan. - The Irish Times, 14.04.2010

Poland mourns air tragic victims. - RTE News, 11.04.2010

Katastrofa samolotu prezydenta. Nikt nie przezyl. - Gazeta.pl, 10.04.2010

The President of Poland was on the plane that crashed near Smolensk - Foreign Ministry. - RIA News, 10.04.2010

Tu-154 crash. - Interfax, 10.04.2010

Nadzwyczajne posiedzenie Rady Ministrow. - Gazeta Wyborcza, 10.04.2010

Leonid Sviridov. The duties of the President of Poland passed to Bronislaw Komorowski. - RIA News, 10.04.2010

Mourning has been extended in Poland. - NTV, 14.02.2010

Eastern Europe: missile decision as "betrayal," political failure. - Deutsche Presse-Agentur, 17.09.2009

President doesn't want government protection service. - Polskie radio, 28.11.2008

Olga Allenova, Georgy Dvali, Vladimir Vodo. The shooting in the night was voiced in Russian. - Kommersant, 25.11.2008. - № 214 (4031)

Elena Partsvania. The Georgian Interior Ministry accuses the Russian military of terrorism. - News-Georgia, 25.11.2008

Philip P. Pan. Georgian, Polish Leaders" Convoy Allegedly Shot At. - The Washington Post, 24.11.2008

Polish President Lech Kaczynski was a bright and controversial personality. He began his political career, which lasted almost 40 years, quite early. But the surprising thing is that in all these years, no one from the Kaczynski family has ever been involved in scandalous incidents. It is a great pity that his life was tragically cut short at the very peak of his brilliant career.

Next to my brother: from birth to big politics

In the Kaczynski family living in Warsaw, twins were born on June 18, 1949 - Jaroslaw and Leszek. Yaroslav was considered the eldest, who saw the world 45 minutes earlier than his brother. The twins’ father, Raimund Kaczynski, was an engineer, and during World War II he fought in the ranks of the Home Army; their mother, Jadwiga Jasevich, was a philologist by profession, and during the war years she was part of the underground scout organization “Grey Ranks.”

Despite the fact that the parents were participants in the Warsaw Uprising, the father was an opponent of the communist regime all his life, and he passed on his dislike for the then government and the Soviet Union to his sons.

The Kaczynski brothers became famous as early as school age, when in 1962 they were invited to play the leading roles of naughty twins in the children's film “About Those Who Stole the Moon.”

The brothers were very close all their lives, so they always walked side by side in life - both in studies and in politics. After graduating from the Lyceum, Lech and his brother became students at the prestigious Faculty of Law of the capital’s university, from which they graduated with the rank of master in 1972. After his studies, Lech ended up in Eastern Pomerania, where he began working as a researcher at the University of Gdańsk. This city played an important role in the life of the future president. Here in 1980 he defended his PhD thesis, and 10 years later he became a doctor of science and professor. In this city he met Maria Matskevich, who soon became his wife. His only daughter Martha was born here in 1980.

Beginning of a political career

It was in Gdansk that the political career of Lech Kaczynski began, because important events for the public life of Poland took place in this city: here, in 1970, a peaceful workers’ demonstration was shot by the communist authorities, and 10 years later the legendary strike of shipyard workers took place. These events led to the birth of the Polish independent trade union "Solidarity", which was founded by Lech Kaczynski.

In 1977, the brothers began active work in the Workers' Defense Committee, whose activities were considered anti-communist by the authorities. Lech then began to collaborate with the independent trade union Solidarity, becoming a legal adviser to this organization. After General Jaruzelski, who wanted to destroy the anti-communist movement, came to power, Lech Kaczynski, as one of the active participants in this organization, was arrested and spent 11 months in prison.

Upon his release, Lech returned to trade union activities. Over time, his role in Solidarity became more and more noticeable: in 1983 he headed the work of one of the commissions, a year later he headed the Gdansk branch of this independent trade union, then in 1988 he headed the all-Polish commission, and in 1989 he became a member of the Solidarity presidium. . After Walesa left for big politics, it was Lech Kaczynski who was elected first deputy chairman of this movement. When the first fair democratic elections were held in Poland in 1989, both Lech and his brother Jaroslaw became senators on the list of the Solidarity party, and two years later they became deputies of the Sejm from the Accord of Centrist Forces party. Under President Walesa, the successful politician Kaczynski held some important government positions, but a rift soon occurred between the incumbent president and the Kaczynski brothers, as they did not approve of his close work with the former communists. When Aleksander Kwasniewski won the presidential elections in 1995, representatives of the left-wing forces became the ruling force in the country. At this time, Lech Kaczynski retreated slightly from politics and returned to teaching.

In March 2005, Lech Kaczynski officially announced his candidacy for participation in the presidential elections. In his election campaign he relied on traditional moral values, Polish nationalism and the Catholic faith, opposing divorce, abortion and same-sex marriage. Voters on October 23, 2005 gave Kaczynski 54.04% of their votes, and on December 23, the 8th President of Poland officially took office. One brother headed the state, and the other, as the leader of the majority party, controlled the government and power. On October 14, 2007, Lech Kaczynski appointed his brother Jaroslaw to the post of Prime Minister of the country. As expected, Poland became a devoted ally of the United States, but relations with Russia at this time deteriorated significantly. When Donald Tusk’s party won the early parliamentary elections in 2007, Yaroslav resigned, and for the remaining time Lech led the country without the official support of his brother.

Tragic death

On April 10, 2010, a government plane with the Polish delegation on board took off for Russia. The Poles wanted to visit the memorial in Katyn and honor the memory of Polish officers executed by the NKVD in 1940. Among the 89 people on board were President Lech Kaczynski and his wife. During landing at the Smolensk Severny airport, the plane got caught in the trees and fell apart in the air. None of the passengers managed to escape. The 8th President of Poland was buried in the Wawel Cathedral in Krakow.