Mateusz Morawiecki said he also wanted to visit the nearby Katyn forest to commemorate the victims of a 1940 massacre of Polish officers and intellectuals by the Soviets.
“On April 10, 2020, the 10th anniversary of the Smolensk disaster, I want to go to Smolensk and Katyn to pay tribute to the victims of the terrible Soviet murder in the Katyn forest and to the victims of the Smolensk catastrophe,” Morawiecki said in a social media post on Thursday.
“Both these events forever changed the course of Polish history," he added on his Facebook profile.
Earlier in the day, his top aide Michał Dworczyk told public broadcaster Polish Radio that the Polish prime minister’s office was “analysing the possibilities of organising such a trip.”
April 10, 2020 will mark exactly 10 years since a Polish plane carrying President Lech Kaczyński, his wife and 94 others, including top political and military figures, crashed near Smolensk, western Russia, killing all those on board.
The disaster has scarred the national psyche and is still a source of controversy and recrimination in Poland.
The Polish officials were on their way to commemorate some 22,000 Polish prisoners of war and intellectuals who were killed in the spring of 1940 on orders from top Soviet authorities in what is known as the Katyn Massacre.
(gs/pk)
Source: IAR, PAP