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Russian, Polish leaders to visit Katyn a year after plane crash

© RIA Novosti . Vladimir Rodionov / Go to the mediabankDmitry Medvedev and Bronislaw Komorowski
Dmitry Medvedev and Bronislaw Komorowski - Sputnik International
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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will meet his Polish counterpart, Bronislaw Komorowski, in Smolensk on April 11, a year after the previous Polish president died in a plane crash near the western Russian city.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will meet his Polish counterpart, Bronislaw Komorowski, in Smolensk on April 11, a year after the previous Polish president died in a plane crash near the western Russian city.

"The heads of both countries will also visit Katyn commemorative complex," the Kremlin said in a statement on Friday.

Ties between Russia and Poland, which had been hampered for decades over a range of historical disputes, have improved since the two sides were drawn together in grief after April 10 Tu-154 plane crash near Russia's western city of Smolensk that killed Polish then-President Lech Kaczynski.

"The Smolensk tragedy happened because the Polish president [Kaczynski] and many other Poles hurried to arrive in Katyn to honor the memory of the victims of Katyn massacre," Komorowski's adviser Tomash Nalench said several months after the crash.

"But those ceremonies got eclipsed by the shock and no one ever recalled them since April 10th," Nalench said.

More than 20,000 Polish officers were killed in 1940 by the NKVD - the Soviet secret police. The executions took place in various parts of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The largest massacre occurred in the Katyn forest near Smolensk.

In November 2010, deputies from the lower house of Russia's parliament approved a declaration recognizing the Katyn massacre as a crime committed by Joseph Stalin's regime. Komorowski has hailed the recognition of the massacre.

The CIS International Aviation Committee (MAK) released a report on January 12 citing pilot error as the main cause of the crash, which occurred when the plane hit trees while attempting to land in thick fog.

Polish experts and officials have criticized the report for lacking sufficient evidence and stressed, in particular, the absence of the conversations between the pilots and air traffic control.

MOSCOW, March 18 (RIA Novosti)

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