I spent a good 10 years dealing with the Smolensk crash - of which, for the first three years, I devoted an average of 6 hours a day to Smolensk. This gives a result comparable to my doctoral studies in theoretical physics at the Institute of Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences. So I am a somewhat informal and self-proclaimed "a Smolensk expert". I know some issues inside out, and as for the rest - I have a good general understanding of the subject. There was a period when I probably knew at least half (or maybe even more) of the people dealing with the catastrophe in Poland, from all sides of our Polish hell: from teams associated with A. Macierewicz, through the committees of the Smolensk Conference, participants of the Mechanics in Aviation conference, prosecutors , bloggers with very diverse political sympathies, as well as people unknown to the public - often including the most outstanding Polish specialists in their fields - but who helped me on the condition that they remain anonymous. Personal contacts with the families of the victims were very important to me.

I participated in a public hearing in the European Parliament in March 2012, and I was personally in Smolensk in March 2014, less than a week after the Russian invasion of Ukraine (a pure coincidence that gave rise to numerous concerns), where we carried out some field measurements. I wrote several longer texts about the crash, which I posted on my home page, and I recorded several lectures, one of which (September 2022) is still available on YouTube. I experienced a lot of hate, most often anonymously, but also a lot of signals that what I was doing had a deeper meaning - especially from the families of the victims, who generally feel abandoned by everyone.

Together with colleagues from several faculties of the Gdańsk University of Technology and the Institute of Fluid-Flow Machinery of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Gdańsk, in March 2012 we prepared a large research project on the crash. We tried to persuade the National Center for Research and Development (a Polish government agency)  to announce a nationwide grant competition in the Smolensk case - to no avail.

I still follow the news, although there are fewer and fewer of them. I still hope, although less and less, that the Prosecutor's Office will publish the results of its research - there are several issues that particularly interest me. I have a very critical attitude towards the reports of the Parliamentary Group and its later incarnation - the Subcommittee of the Ministry of National Defense. In my opinion, there is a lot of stretching of facts and wishful thinking (to put it very mildly). On the other hand, the attitude of the Polish State in the period after April 2010, during the government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the presidency of Bronisław Komorowski, was scandalous and shameful. All doubts were swept under the carpet, absolutely essential evidence was not secured, which was in Polish hands but was irretrievably lost.

Quite an interesting thread were the American expert opinions ordered by the Subcommittee of the Ministry of National Defense (in NIAR - National Institute for Aviation Research, Gerardo Olivares group, AVET Labs). They have been classified and we will probably learn about them only in about six months, when the audit in the Subcommittee ends. However, enough information has leaked to know what to expect there. A 170-page fragment of the report (Executive Summary) was disclosed as an attachment to a letter addressed by TVN to the National Broadcasting Council, in response to the allegations brought against TVN by A. Macierewicz - and that's how we know it. I looked through this fragment and was not surprised that it was basically consistent with the Miller Commission report (the plane went low, hit a birch tree, lost its wingtip and rolled over, turning 150 degrees). The part of the research regarding the impact with the ground has not been completed because NIAR did not obtain data on the impact area, especially the degree and type of tree cover.

The problem is that - in my opinion - all commissions, from MAK to the Macierewicz and NIAR teams, gave us the wrong alternative: either pilot error or a bomb explosion. In my opinion, there was no pilot error and no bombs exploded. If the aircraft was attacked, the method was completely different. I have my own hypotheses and that is why I am interested in the results of the current investigation by the Prosecutor's Office. I placed the pdf file of Executive Summary and my other studies on OneDrive, giving links on my home page so that everone could read it - in January 2024 my files from OneDrive disappeared, which is why most of the links under the lecture on YouTube do not work. Maybe someday I will put them on another server.

Unfortunately, no one seems to be interested in the Smolensk issue anymore, so it's a waste of my time...

(text dated 17.02.2024)