Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the identical twin of late Polish President Lech Kaczynski who died in an April air crash in Russia, slammed Moscow’s inquiry into the accident as a “mockery”.

“The report makes a mockery of Poland,” Mr Kaczynski told reporters after Russian investigators in Moscow presented their findings earlier blaming the crew and other occupants of the presidential plane.

“This is the result of leaving the investigation in the hands of the Russians,” Mr Kaczynski, who is also the leader of Poland’s conservative opposition, said.

“The report blames Polish pilots and Poland without proof in a unilateral fashion. Many questions remain unanswered,” he added.

“I didn’t hear anything today that would rule out or confirm the hypothesis of an assassination,” Mr Kaczynski remarked. Conspiracy theories that a plot was behind the crash have circulated among Mr Kaczynski supporters.

Senior Polish crash investigator Edmund Klich also accused Tatiana Anodina, who steered the Russian probe, of “lying about free access for Polish experts to all the activities in the investigation”.

Russian investigators blamed Polish failures for the plane crash that killed Lech Kaczynski, revealing that top officials put pressure on inexperienced pilots to land in dangerous weather.

Lech Kaczynski died with 95 others when his presidential jet crashed on April 10, 2010, as it attempted to land in fog near the city of Smolensk in northwestern Russia, ahead of a high-profile World War II memorial ceremony.

In a damning report listing Polish shortcomings that risks sparking new tensions with Warsaw, the Russian probe included audio evidence that two top officials entered the cockpit to pressure pilots to land the plane as they did not want to annoy the President.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.