Divided Poland marks first anniversary of Russia crash

Poland yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of a plane crash in Russia that killed President Lech Kaczynski and dozens of other high-profile Poles, amid bitter domestic divisions and a row with Moscow.

At a ceremony in central Warsaw, the late President’s identical twin and current conservative opposition leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, lashed out.

He slammed the “weakness of the (Polish) state, which was not up to the task of protecting its own President”.

In a stark sign of splits in Poland’s establishment, the Kaczynski twins’ Law and Justice party (PiS) boycotted official events and organised its own.

Earlier yesterday, at 8.41 a.m. , the exact time of the April 10, 2010, tragedy in Smolensk, western Russia, a visibly emotional President Bronislaw Komorowski paid silent tribute to his predecessor and the 95 other victims in a Warsaw church.

Bowing before a memorial plaque, Mr Komorowski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk - both from the centre-right Civic Platform (PO), PiS’s nemesis - placed candles, a traditional mourning symbol in deeply Catholic Poland.

Later, in a Warsaw cemetery where many of the victims lie, Mr Komorowski appealed for the tragedy not to be a source of strife.

“A year on, we should see what is great, what is good,” he said.

“One of the finest memorials we can build together is to care for the dreams and passion of those who died, so that they find followers who will carry their passion, dreams and hopes into the future,” he added.

At the Presidential palace, thousands of Kaczynski supporters gathered before a makeshift shrine. At the foot of a birchwood cross was a model of Poland’s Presidential Tupolev 154 jet broken in two.

Lech Kaczynski’s delegation had been bound for a commemoration in the Katyn forest, near Smolensk, for some 22,000 captured Polish officers slain by the Soviet secret police in 1940.

On Saturday and yesterday, Warsaw and Moscow traded barbs over the removal of a Polish-language memorial plaque in Smolensk which stated that the crash victims were heading to Katyn.

The Polish foreign ministry warned that Mr Komorowski may not lay a wreath today when he meets with Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev there, but PiS demanded he cancel the trip outright.

Yesterday, Russia expressed “bewilderment” at Polish protests, saying Warsaw had been informed in advance about a bilingual plaque that did not mention Katyn.