© Sergei Karpukhin / ReutersRussia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
Moscow has responded to claims by the Polish government that Russia "deliberately" brought down a plane carrying the Polish president in 2010: We're not surprised that we're being blamed for everything, again.
While Russia recovers from the terror attack in St. Petersburg, Polish prosecutors have leveled fresh allegations that Russian air traffic staff "deliberately" caused the downing of a plane carrying the Polish president, Lech Kachzynski, in 2010.
As Sky News explains:
Poland opened a new investigation into the disaster after the 2015 election of the Law and Justice party, which is led by the twin brother of the late president.It's a pretty ridiculous theory, on multiple levels.
Mr Kuczynski has now said his findings have shown that two Russian air traffic controllers and a third person in the control tower willingly contributed to the disaster.
They were guilty of "deliberately causing a catastrophe," he said.
But to keep it short: The plane in question was flying to Katyn, the infamous site where the NKVD allegedly massacred thousands of Polish nationals. Not only was Russia willing to recognize that the Soviets committed this crime, but they were going to allow the Poles to honor their dead at Katyn.
This was all part of Moscow's "sunshine policy" — the exact time when you wouldn't deliberately down a Polish jet.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said yesterday that Moscow wasn't surprised that they were being blamed for everything, again:
During a special news conference held on April 3 regarding the investigation of the Polish President's plane crash on April 10, 2010, representatives of the Prosecutor General's Office of Poland announced that the Russian dispatchers who serviced that fateful flight at the Smolensk-Severny airfield were being charged with allegedly taking deliberate actions that led to the disaster.Every day is Blame Russia Day.
In fact, this did not come as a surprise to us. It is just a hardening of the Polish government's position, which initially tried to at least partially lay responsibility for the tragedy on Russian specialists, and now they are trying to baselessly ascribe some malicious intent to them, and using the corresponding labels. We have already expressed our view on this issue - both through Russian law enforcement agencies and the Foreign Ministry. We are mindful of the fact that the true causes of the plane crash near Smolensk were determined and recorded in the report of the Interstate Aviation Committee of January 12, 2011 following a thorough investigation. The investigation showed that the Russian dispatchers had nothing to do with the incident, and Warsaw knows this very well. In spite of the transparency of the situation, the Polish authorities continue to use the tragedy to settle political scores in the country. At the same time, taxpayer money goes to support the meaningless activity of new pseudo-investigatory mechanisms, the results of which are not visible or go against common sense. We do not think this tactic will achieve anything other than damaging Russian-Polish relations, which are already not in the best shape.
Comment: It seems Russia is garnering too much sympathy following the tragedy in St Petersburg - time to ramp up the 'Russians are evil' theme.