MOSCOW. Aug 3 (Interfax) - Russia regrets that the Polish commission, which investigated the tragedy involving the presidential airplane, was trying in its report to divide the culpability and responsibility, Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin said.
"The Russians conducted the investigation of the horrible tragedy with the Polish president's aircraft absolutely openly, guided solely by professionalism, relying on facts and not their interpretations or some hypotheses. This work was not about dividing the culpability or responsibility," the minister told journalists on Wednesday.
"Unfortunately, this manifested in the report submitted by the Polish side on July 29," the transport minister said.
The emphasis is all the more unclear because Polish experts "had at their disposal, in accordance with the standards of the recommended practice, Annex 13 to the Chicago Convention, based on which the investigation was carried out, no less factual material than Russian experts did, he said.
The Polish flight was international, and that is "precisely what the air traffic controller was guided by," he said.
"Had he actively interfered in the commander's decision making on landing, obviously he would have unacceptably exceeded his authority and violated international practice standards, whereby it is the commander who is responsible for making a decision," he said.
"All the actions of the crew - and our experts are certain of and insist on it - were aimed at landing against the odds. There is no other explanation for what the crew was doing arbitrarily at an altitude below the one set by the air traffic controller for safe landing," Levitin said.
A Tupolev Tu-154 jetliner carrying a Polish official delegation crashed near Smolensk in the morning of April 10, 2010. The crash killed all of the 96 people aboard, including the Polish president and his wife. The Polish delegation planned to attend the memorial service for Polish prisoners of war executed by NKVD.