Polish Defence Minister ‘terrorism’ comments ‘groundless’: Kremlin
PR dla Zagranicy
Roberto Galea
14.03.2016 15:57
Comments by Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz suggesting the 2010 crash of a Polish presidential plane was caused by terrorism have been described as “groundless” by the Kremlin.
Antoni Macierewicz. Photo: PAP/Jakub Kamiński
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday that official investigations by Warsaw and Moscow into the Smolensk plane crash in western Russia which killed 96 people, including then Polish President Lech Kaczyński, did not reveal any foul play.
“Based on all that, we can call such statements [by Macierewicz] groundless, unobjective, and not having anything in common with the real circumstances of this tragedy,” Peskov was reported as saying.
He was responding to a comment by Macierewicz, who said: “What happened near Smolensk was aimed at depriving Poland of its leadership, which was on a path of leading our nation to independence.”
Macierewicz did not explicitly say that Russia had carried out a terrorist attack against Poland.
“We [Poland] were the first victims of terrorism in the 1930s, and through Smolensk, we can say that we were also the first major victim of terrorism in modern conflict, which is unfolding before our eyes,” Macierewicz said in a lecture at the School of Social and Cultural Media in Toruń, north-central Poland. (rg/pk)