Katyn-2: Who is to blame?

The disaster near Smolensk, who claimed the lives of 96 people, including Polish President Lech Kachinsky and other representatives of the Polish political elite and prominent public figures, immediately began to grow into conspiracy versions. This is not surprising. On the one hand, not only the late president, but, perhaps, most passengers of the aircraft in sympathies to the current Russian authorities have never been seen. Lech Kachinsky was considered if not as a personal enemy of tandemocrats, then certainly as a person is very uncomfortable, especially remembering the open and effective support that he provided to Mikhail Saakashvili during the days of the Russian-Georgian War. On the other hand, the reputation of the current Russian government in the world is very low. And, as the murder of Alexander Litvinenko showed, she does not stop at anything to destroy those whom she considers to be her enemies.

But by this, in fact, the arguments in favor of the theory of conspiracy are exhausted. No specifics associated with the circumstances of the disaster, which could testify in favor of this theory, has not yet appeared. And it is unlikely to appear.

Let's look at how to make an attempt against passengers of the aircraft at all. There are three main ways. Firstly, you can put a bomb on the plane. Secondly, the plane can be shot down (rockets or machine-gun-gun fire, both from the ground and from the fighter). And thirdly, behind the helm of the aircraft there may be a suicide bomb, who at the right time will crash into the ground with a car and passengers (option: terrorists burst into the cabin of pilots, kill the crew and direct the aircraft at a destructive peak).

It is not difficult to guess that not one of these methods is applicable to the catastrophe of the Polish President. All of them leave too many traces - both purely visual, and in the notes of black boxes, which, as we know, intact fell into the hands of investigators. You can, of course, put forward the theory that al-Qaeda decided to take revenge on the president for expeling Chechen refugees from Poland, but you can imagine a pilot-shahid at the helm of the presidential liner, only in a bad adventure novel.

If something that indicated the attempt was found at the place of the tragedy, all the newspapers of the world would scream about this today. However, nothing of the kind happens, and all versions are concentrated around the emergence of some kind of abnormal situation at the very last moment, during the approach. Here we can talk about the error of the pilot or ground services, as well as about the technical malfunction. But no one will organize attempts in this way. The ground service, of course, can deliberately give incorrect information to the pilot about landing conditions. However, this does not guarantee that the plane will really break. The pilot can ignore the dispatcher’s instruction and focus, for example, on the testimony of devices. The aircraft can make a forced landing or even get damage, but it is not at all necessary that everyone or at least some passengers will die. In addition, no one could know in advance that in the morning, when the President of Poland arrives, there would be a thick fog over Smolensk. And to create such a fog on a given day and an hour is even more impossible. So, on "maybe", attempts on the first persons of the state are not prepared.

All this does not mean that in the official reports of the circumstances of the disaster near Smolensk there will be no lies. Of course, while the investigation has just begun, and it is too early to talk about the true causes of the disaster. However, the existing information leads to certain thoughts. So, it seems that the plane of the Polish president was landing only one, and not four times, according to representatives of the Russian Air Force. But this contradiction is not related to the theory of conspiracy, but rather to the desire of our military to relieve themselves of responsibility for the tragedy. Indeed, the Russian Air Force was responsible for the reception of the Polish side No. 1, since the North Airfield near Smolensk was responsible for the military. It is possible that the same desire to evade liability is the replication of the version that the pilot did not independently decide to land in complex weather conditions, but was under pressure from the President of the Kaczynsky. Let us leave this version on the conscience of her creators. It is unlikely that the experienced pilots of the presidential liner were potential suicides.

Meanwhile, the "Severny" is indeed the only airfield in the Smolensk area that can accept the Tu-154. But there was no necessary navigation equipment for planting blindly, which is in large international airports. In addition, there could be not only the pilot’s mistake, but also the error of the dispatcher. After all, military dispatchers are usually known to English. And according to the information of Novaya Gazeta, there are no permanent dispatchers at the Severny airfield at all. So now it is difficult to say which dispatchers were on the "North" at the time of the arrival of the Polish delegation. Most likely, still the military, because the Air Force was responsible for the reception of the presidential aircraft.

But the trouble, probably, was that in any case, the dispatchers were new people at the airfield and did not know all the features of the area. The pilots of the Polish aircraft did not freely speak the Russian language. Strictly speaking, they were not obliged to own. According to existing rules, during international flights, negotiations between crews and dispatchers should be conducted in English. However, judging by the records leaked to the Internet, the pilots of the Polish liner still negotiated with the ground in Russian, although with a strong Polish accent. Well, formally speaking, they violated international rules, but certainly did this forcedly, not relying on knowledge of English by Russian military dispatchers. And this language barrier could also play a fatal role.

The question of whether the North airfield was also unexplained for receiving aircraft on weather conditions in that unfortunate morning. Judging by the fact that an hour and a half before the presidential Tu-154 landed there Yak-40 with journalists, the airfield was not closed. So, the dispatcher was unlikely to order the presidential liner to go to the reserve airfield. And the Russian military seems to admit that the instructions of the dispatcher were only advisory in nature.

I am sure that there was no malicious intent in the disaster near Smolensk. A combination of a number of adverse factors led to it. Including eternal Russian disaster - bad roads (in this case, airfields). But we, unfortunately, have no other airfields and other dispatchers. At least in the Smolensk region.