Thread by @akoz33

Tomorrow there will be a debate on Ekho Moskvy on the question of the 2010 crash of the plane carrying Poland’s President Lech Kaczyński and much of Poland’s political, military elite at Smoleńsk, in which the crew and all passengers were killed. The debate will be between Mark

https://twitter.com/akoz33/status/1398646896823095307

Solonin and these two Polish experts Artymowicz and Ciszewski. Recall that after his YouTube video’s in which, based mostly on an analysis by an anonymous Russian or Russians writing under the pseudonym Flanker20 and also (but to a lesser extent) by the Commission set up by

Poland’s former Defence Minister Macierewicz, Solonin claimed that the most likely explanation for the crash was that it was caused by a bomb and that all actions by Russia’s ground personnel and Russian authorities suggested a planned assassination and an attempt to make it

appear that the crash was caused by the negligence and incompetence of the Polish crew, the commander of Poland’s air force, who also died in the crash and the late Lech Kaczyński. Solonin, in my opinion completely convincingly, showed that the official Russian report had many

things that did not make sense. At the end he challenged any technically qualified experts who wanted to argue the opposite case to a debate. Solonin, a great historian of WWII, is by education an aircraft engineer.
His challenge was directed primarily at the authors of the

Russian so called International Aviation Commission report, but not, not surprisingly, by any of the authors of the MAK report or any other Russian experts. But it was taken up by the brilliant anti-Putin journalist, writer, historian and by education a philologist, Yulia

Latynina, who answered Solonin in a long article in Novaya Gazeta and two long YouTube videos. As Latynina frequently noted, she is not formally technically qualified but she is extremely hard working, intelligent and capable and she enjoyed the help of two expert pilots & a very

well known aircraft expert - all known for their independence from Russia’s authorities (well, you have to be to be Latynina’s friend). Latynina expressed her admiration for Mark Solonin’s work as a historian but not on this issue. However, she did agree with several points,

including the worthlessness of the MAK report, which she also described as a pack of obvious lies. She agreed with Solonin that Russia was principally responsible for the catastrophe but she argued that it was a case of what could be called criminal negligence and incompetence

than deliberate murder. The purpose of the MAK report was to hide Russia’s responsibility by blaming the victims.
However she also harshly criticized the Macierewicz report, which she claimed was a deliberate attempt to create a martyrological myth for political purposes.

At the end of her second video Latynina accepted Mark Solonin’s challenge to a debate. This was rejected by Mark Solonin, on the grounds that his challenge was to a suitably qualified person and Yulia Latynina, however brilliant in other areas (both of them very polite and

praised each other effusively but not for things related to this dispute) was not qualified to debate about this topic.
The situation is somewhat reminiscent of the old dispute between Latynina and the historian Felshtynsky over the Moscow apartment bombings in 1999. Felshtynsky

who coauthored with Litvinenko “Blowing up Russia” claimed that the bombings were the work of the Russian security services who tried to blame them on Chechen terrorists and happened to be caught red handed, while Latynina argued for the view that the bombings were done by

unknown culprits, probably islamists, and the FSB agents who were caught planting explosives were probably engaged in trying to frame someone, as they often do (actually, the two views are not entirely mutually exclusive as the connections between Russian security services and

Chechen terrorists were well established and not even particularly hidden).
Anyway, now a debate will take place between Solonin and Artymowicz and Ciszewski. Artymowicz is a professor of astrophysics, living in Canada. His relations with Solonin are already acrimonious. As I

mentioned in an earlier thread, Artymowicz has damaged his case in my eyes by politicizing it by comparing Poland’s PiS government to Putin and in other ways. It also seems that a relative of his (or a person with the sane surname wrote insulting e-mails to a Solonin, lamenting

the condition of Soviet technical education in the late period of the USSR, i.e. when Solonin studied aviation engineering and then worked on secret projects in Kuibyshev). Solonin replied by observing wryly that Artymowicz was able to leave Poland to study in the USA at a time

it was not something available to ordinary Poles. The other Polish debater, Ciszewski, is a former Polish military pilot and a self-declared admirer of Solonin’s historical work.
However, given the politicization of this debate I don’t expect much of it.
Personally, I would have

much preferred a debate between Latynina and Solonin (who are politically on the same side), although I understand that debating with a dilettante on equal terms is always somewhat humiliating for any professional, who really finds himself in an almost unwinnable situation. I

have considered Latynina’s arguments somewhat carefully and I find many of them quite powerful. One is that Solonin has ignited the Polish black boxes. But the really key points seem to me two: Solonin’s arguments crucially depend on claims that Latynina’s advisor’s told her

are exaggerated: they involve the strength and solidity of the modern passenger aircraft, both its main body and the wings. In both cases, Latynina says, Solonin has ignored crucial weaknesses, especially in the roof of a plane (Kaczyński’s plane hit the ground in an upside

down position & the ends of the wings. There is also a factual dispute about the final state of the bodies of the victims, which seems pretty crucial. Whether these points will be seriously discussed in tomorrow debate or whether they will be drowned by politics is the big issue.