Russia | A recent book blames Russia for the disastrous plane crash in Poland

What if the plane crash that took the leading authorities and experts of more than 90 European countries to their graves was not an accident, but a planned murder?

What if it were later revealed that the body parts returned in closed coffins were buried in plastic bags, dirty, messed up and desecrated?

Jessica Aron information book published on Tuesday Putin’s World War According to (Johnny Kniga 2024), this is exactly what happened. In addition, for more than a decade, Russia has been able to dictate how the crash is talked about.

Jessikka Aro is a former journalist specializing in information influence in Russia, now the communications director of the trade association Tehy. Aro has also dealt with Russian information influence in his previous book Putin’s trolls (Johnny Book 2019).

Aro’s new book deals with Russian information operations in various parts of Europe and Africa. The largest single section of the book, which covers half of the entire book, deals with the plane crash that happened in Smolensk, Russia in 2010.

According to the book, it was not an accident. A graduate in 2022 says the same a new investigationwhich, according to Aro, the Polish mainstream media still considers a conspiracy theory.

Natalia Januszko was only 22 years old when he died in Russia In Smolensk on April 10, 2010. All 89 passengers and seven crew members of the Tupolev Tu-154 died in the plane crash. The party was on its way to a commemoration party, where the memory of the thousands of Poles murdered by the Soviet secret police in Katyn was honored.

The plane crash has been called the most destructive in Poland since the Second World War. A significant number of the dead were high-ranking Polish politicians and civil servants – among the victims was, for example, the president Lech Kaczyński with his wife.

In addition, the Governor of the Central Bank of Poland, the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, the Commander of the Air Force, the Commander of the Special Forces and the Director of the Institute of National Remembrance also died.

According to an official investigation by Russia the plane crash was caused by mistakes made by the Polish crew: bad flight conditions and a pilot who tried to land despite them.

In Moscow, the Polish Minister of Health told Januszko’s family, who came to identify the body, that they should look closely at their loved ones – in Poland, the coffin would no longer be opened. The sealed coffins in Moscow were buried without an autopsy provided by the Polish authorities.

Russia carried out the investigation and the autopsies of the victims and announced the investigation. The head of the Smolensk Accident Investigation Committee was the then Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin. was also involved in the investigation Sergei Shoiguthen Minister of Emergency and current Minister of Defense.

According to Aro’s sources, the Polish government of the then prime minister Donald Hardly with the management tried to stir up speculations about Russian involvement in the crash. According to Aro’s sources, an independent investigation was never conducted.

Part the relatives were not convinced by the documentation provided by Russia. They began to do their own investigations into the causes of the accident and demand that the graves be opened.

The Polish government changed, and in 2016 a new investigation into the crash was started. With that, the graves of the victims were opened. The result was a shock.

Natalia’s father Grzegorz Januszko says he was there when his daughter’s coffin was opened. Januszko is one of the main characters of Aro’s book, some of whom had arrived in Helsinki on Tuesday to speak at the launch of Aro’s book.

“They [venäläiset] put the body parts in plastic bags like a trash can and tied them with string. They did it to speed up the decomposition process,” says Januszko.

“It was a conscious decision by the Russians.”

According to Januszko, there was trash and three pairs of shoes in the coffin.

The investigations revealed that the daughter’s coffin also contained the body parts of six other plane crash victims. Natalia’s remains were also found in five other graves, Januszko says.

According to him, Russia’s reaction to the opening of the graves has been silence.

According to Aro’s book, the remains of several victims had been deliberately desecrated. The details are disturbing. According to Aro, the information about them comes from the victims’ relatives.

According to the new Polish study completed in 2022 the cause of the plane crash was the explosives on the plane. According to it, the explosives would have been placed on the plane while it was being serviced in Russia.

To this day, Russia has refused to hand over the wreckage of the plane or the black boxes to Poland.

Jessica Aro has previously had to because of his work subjected to serious and long-lasting harassment. The harassment has been dealt with in court. Aro wasn’t sure that he would dare to write a book on this topic.

“By writing from this marginalized point of view, I will marginalize myself once again. I expose myself to the same ridicule as before,” he says.

“It has been distressing and caused sleepless nights.”

However, according to him, writing the book was necessary.

“Basically, I hope these people get justice. I would hope that some international body could properly investigate the accident. As, for example, MH17 was investigated.”

MH17 is the plane that was shot down by Russian-backed separatists in 2014.

As a reader the book’s information and conclusions are sometimes difficult to evaluate without photos, documents and expertise on which the presented information is based. However, it seems clear that Poland left the original accident investigation in Russia’s hands and the investigation was carried out in a substandard way for both Russia and Poland.

Against that background, the wish of Aro and the relatives and researchers involved in the book to find out the truth sounds justified.