Word: polish
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...initiatives of his career was to achieve greater openness and recognition from Russia about the massacre of Polish officers by the Soviet secret police in 1940. He insisted that the two countries could not build normal ties without achieving reconciliation over these crimes. On Wednesday, Putin made an unprecedented gesture of good will on this issue, becoming the first Russian leader ever to commemorate Stalin's mass executions of Poles alongside a Polish leader. Prime Minister Tusk had flown in to Smolensk that day for the ceremony in the village of Katyn, where most of the 22,000 political murders...
After the ceremony, which marked the 70th anniversary of the killings at Katyn, Putin gave a controversial explanation of why Stalin had ordered them. He said Stalin was seeking revenge for the death in 1920 of Red Army soldiers in Polish prisoner of war camps, where around 32,000 troops under Stailn's command who had been captured by the Poles died of hunger and disease. "It is my personal opinion that Stalin felt personally responsible for this tragedy, and carried out the executions [of Poles in 1940] out of a sense of revenge," Putin said at a press conference...
...most people in Poland and in Russia, Wednesday's ceremony with Tusk was still seen as a remarkable step forward in the process of reconciliation. President Kaczynski was due to arrive on Saturday for another ceremony along with a delegation of more than 80 Polish officials and relatives of the victims of the Katyn massacres. "I hope I get a visa," Kaczynski had joked when announcing the visit. As part of the ceremony, he was due to receive an urn of soil from the forests were the thousands of Polish officers had been executed with a bullet to the base...
...chief of Poland's military and the deputy minister of foreign affairs, as well as scores of other officials who were on that flight. How the tragedy will effect relations between Poland and Russia will depend a lot on how Russia handles the investigation of the crash alongside Polish authorities. For his part, Putin is traveling to Smolensk on Saturday to help oversee the inquiry and meet with Tusk, who has also said he is coming to the scene of the crash. But whatever the investigators find among the wreckage, Poles will now have yet another tragic reason to mourn...
Poland has launched a week of national mourning, following the devastating plane crash in Russia that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife as well as several other top-ranking officials. Ninety-six passengers were killed after the aged Russian aircraft, a Tupolev Tu-154, plunged into a forest near the airport in the Russian city of Smolensk. The Polish officials were there to mark the 70th anniversary of a massacre of Polish officers. (Read a 1951 story on the Katyn Forest Massacre...