As far as I know, nobody here is a Polish national, but this was still awful to read about.
Quote:
WARSAW — A plane carrying the Polish president and dozens of the country’s top political and military leaders to the site of the Soviet massacre of Polish officers in World War II crashed in western Russia on Saturday, killing everyone on board.
President Lech Kaczynski’s plane tried to land in a thick fog, missing the runway and snagging treetops about half a mile from the airport in Smolensk, scattering chunks of flaming fuselage across a bare forest.
The crash came as a stunning blow to Poland, wiping out a large portion of the country’s leadership in one fiery explosion. And in a bizarre twist, it happened at the moment that Russia and Poland were beginning to come to terms with the killing of more than 20,000 members of Poland’s elite officer corps in the same place 70 years ago.
...
Russian emergency officials said 97 people were killed. They included Poland’s deputy foreign minister and a dozen members of Parliament, the chiefs of the army and the navy, and the president of the national bank. They included Anna Walentynowicz, 80, the former dock worker whose firing in 1980 set off the Solidarity strike that ultimately overthrew Polish Communism, as well as relatives of victims of the massacre that they were on their way to commemorate.
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Source:
New York Times
By way of providing some context, the President of Poland is the head of state but not the head of government. He has veto power over legislation, but otherwise he mostly acts as a figurehead traveling around the world and giving speeches to represent his country. The Polish Prime Minister is the person who is really in charge, and he is still alive. Nonetheless, this disaster is roughly equivalent to the US losing the Secretary of State, Speaker of the House, National Security Advisor, head of the FBI, several Senators, some of the Joint Chiefs and some political spouses all at once.
Right now, all I can think is that there's unfortunately a reason why the US is so paranoid keeping members of government separate as much as possible.