New monument to late Polish President Lech Kaczyński
PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk
17.06.2018 08:30
Top officials including Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki have taken part in the unveiling of a statue of late Polish President Lech Kaczyński.
The statue of Lech Kaczyński in Szczecin. Photo: PAP/Marcin Bielecki
The ceremony took place in the north-western Polish city of Szczecin on Saturday.
Lech Kaczyński died on April 10, 2010, when a Polish plane carrying him, his wife, and 94 others, mainly political and military top brass, crashed while trying to land at the Smolensk air base in western Russia. All aboard were killed.
Defence Minister Mariusz Błaszczak read out a letter at Saturday’s ceremony from the leader of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, Jarosław Kaczyński, the twin brother of the late president.
Jarosław Kaczyński said in the letter that his brother had “initiated… a policy towards history that broke with the pedagogy of shame promoted by the establishment for years. He kept saying that if we want to be a great nation, we have to value ourselves."
A new commission to investigate the presidential plane crash was set up by the Law and Justice party after it came to power in 2015.
The commission said last year that the plane was probably destroyed by a mid-air explosion and that Russian air traffic controllers deliberately misled Polish pilots about their location as they neared the runway.
(pk)
Source: PAP