King Obama

Polish pilots of the government airliner that crashed on Saturday in Smolensk, killing the country’s president and other dignitaries, were warned not to land because of adverse weather conditions, Sergei Ivanov, Russia’s deputy prime minister, said on Monday.

He said an initial examination of the flight’s black box recorders showed the crew had been clearly warned it was not a good idea to try to land the plane.

The airplane descended in thick fog and clipped some trees, crashing several hundred metres short of the runway.

Lech Kaczynski, Poland’s president, was killed, along with 95 others, including many dignitaries on their way to ceremonies at Katyn forest, not far from Smolensk – one of the places where the Soviets executed more than 22,000 officers in 1940.

“The condition of both recorders…is satisfactory,” Mr Ivanov told a meeting of the special commission investigating the crash that is headed by Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister. Full Story