Thread by @akoz33

This thread is a kind of “preliminary report” on my own view of the Smolensk crash of 2010, in which Poland’s president Lech Kaczyński and much of the Polish military and political elite died.

As I have written several times: I used to be almost certain that the crash was an accident mostly due to the terrible state of the Smolensk airport, incompetence of Russian flight controllers, mistakes of the Polish crew, bad weather and bad luck.

I considered the idea that the crash was the result of an assassination ordered by Putin, a conspiracy theory without foundation.

Three youtube talks by the great historian (who is also a professional aviation engineer) Mark Solonin changed my mind. Now, I have become basically an agnostic about the issue, waiting for more developments.
Let me try to explain my original views and what has happened since.

Basically since the Russian apartment bombings (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_a… ) of 1999 I had no delusions about how far Russian siloviki would go. The murder of Litvinenko (who coauthored with Felshtinsky a book on the bombings) added one element to it:

even the brazen assassination committed openly by Russian agents would be explained away by the West and will meet with no serious response.
Putin also realised that and that’s why I think Litvinenko’s murder was a watershed.

Form this point he knew that there were few red lines that could not be crossed, at least in this area.
Then there were also a number of prominent Putin’s rivals who died in air crashes, such a general Lebed, general Troshev, Svatoslav Fedorov.

All of this made me feel that Putin would not have had any problems blowing up the Polish president whom he certainly detested - if it was possible, and was going to be clearly advantageous with little risk.

I did not really pay much attention then to the technical details of the matter. What made me reject the assassination idea were basically these of considerations.

1. It would be very difficult to arrange a crash so that no clear evidence of Russia’s involvement would be left. Trying to arrange a “natural crash”, by means of artificial fog and feeding the crew false information, would not guarantee success.

The pilots might still have landed and if the plane did crash, most or some people on board would have probably survived (there are very few “natural” crashes in which everybody dies).

Survivors would have talked. On the other hand, had Russian agents managed to plant a bomb in Warsaw, they could not know what the pilot’s decisions would be. The flight could have been cancelled - in which case the bomb or bombs would likely have been found.

Or the pilots could have decided to fly to Moscow (as was suggested) rather than to Smolensk, causing a lot of headache to the plotters and possibly leading to exposure.

Finally, killing most of the Polish political and military elite could have made sense had Russia immediately intended to go to war. But the relations between Russia and Poland and Russia and the West were not them yet what they became after 2014.

But if you don’t go to war immediately after such an event, if you wait for, say, 10 years, then the entire elite will be rebuilt and replaced by others, who may be even more competent and more hostile.

In other words, unless you take advantage of the situation that you created, there is no point creating it. The only reason for doing so would be hatred and spite.
Mark Solonin, changed my mind by arguing on technical grounds.

His arguments were mostly based by a Russian analysis by someone writing under the pseudonym Flanker20 (I have this document but still have not read it).

He also referred to three other reports: the first official Russian report called MAK, the first Polish report known as the Miller report, made under the Civic Platform government and the second Polish report called the Macierewicz Report

(named after Poland’s former Defense Minister Macierewicz - a strong supporter of the assassination theory). This is basically what Solonin did:
1. He convincingly demolished the MAK report, showing that it contained numerous lies.

2. He pointed out that the dispersion of the bodies over a huge radius and the condition of the bodies was impossible under any natural crash scenario.

3. He pointed out that the MAK report claimed that the destruction of the bodies (which were broken into tiny fragment and mixed up) was due to the plane hitting the ground with the force of 100G.

Solonin argued that such a thing is impossible based on the construction of the aircraft and aerodynamic calculations.
4. He pointed out that if somehow a plane could hit the ground with the force of 100G a huge crater would have to result and there is no sign of any.

Energy cannot just evaporate.

Solonin also expressed shock that Poland’s Interior Minister Miller, under whom the Miller report was prepared, apparently stated that he “never looked at he bodies of the victims and did not want to do so”.

He compared it to a murder investigator stating that he does not consider viewing the victim’s corpse an important element in the investigation.
Solonin hypothesis was then the final destruction of the plane was cause by an explosion.

However, he argued that before the explosion took place, efforts were made to bring the plane as close to a natural crash as possible, including creating artificial fog

(this we know is possible as such technology was developed in the USSR and tested as recently as 2014 -according to official reports in Russian media.
Solonin challenged anyone who wished to do so to a technical debate on this issue.

Yulia Latynina answered Solonin on her own YouTube channel and in Novaya Gazeta, in a two part argument, of which only one has so far appeared.

She started by describing the unusual even for Russia, hostility Putin has displayed to Poland and to Kaczynski, leaving no doubt that she believed that Putin would not need any additional motive to order or approve such an action if it could be done.

She also agreed with Solonin that the MAK report is full of lies and worthless. She then considered the course of events according to the Polish Miller report but also including the information gathered form a number of onboard recording devices

She also pointed out some, possibly deliberate, falsehoods in the Macierwicz report, but in the first part did not refer to the Flanker report or the 100G and lack of crater issue (which to me seem to be the main points). I am awaiting for part 2, of her analysis.

There was another development: two Polish experts appeared on the Ekho Mozkvy chanel and (in good Russian) argued against Solonin’s view.

These two are Paweł Artymowicz, who is a professor of physics and a pilot, and Marek Ciszewski, a pilot former colonel of the Polish Airforce.
They both forcefully argued agains the explosion theory, but I can’t say that at this stage they added much because of the following:

Artymowicz claimed that the crash was a accident which fits very well with his own calculations - but offered no evidence but his words. But he make one important claim: the claim that Solonin’s idea about the position of the bodies is wrong.

Contrary to Solonin, the bodies were dispersed over a small radius, typical for such crashes. He id not offer any evidence for this but suggested that Solonin got his information from Macierwicz, who has been deliberately falsifying the evidence.

Finally Artymowicz completely ruined his case (in my eyes) by stating that Solonin was motivated by his hatred of Putin and was inadvertently helping Putinist, PiS regime in Poland.

Ciszewski, however, was much better. He declared himself a great admirer of Solonin as a historian (he even brought with him Polish translations of several of Solonin’s books), said that he wrote to him e-mails and talked with on Skype to persuade him that he is wrong

and that he will be happy to debate this matter in public and present his evidence.

So here the current state of debate. I have to say that as far as I am concerned, the key issues are this 100G force and lack of crater.

A lot of discussion reduces to the question whether a birch tree could or could not have sliced away half a wing of the aircraft, but to me this issue seems much less significant that the other two.