Now the question is - Is Putin dumb enough to do this? What does it get him? Are there rogue FSB/KGB agents involved?
Either Putin was too stupid to hold a more open investigation, or too guilty. Take your pick.
Doubt if it’s rogues. Before Obama, Poland was on it’s way to becoming a reverse Cuba, an immediate western thorn in Russia’s side. Add the missile defense shield, and Poland would become a permanent headache to Russia. Now, with all the best leaders struck down in a single blow, Putin gets back the breathing room he lost when Poland gained it’s freedom. The amazing thing to me is that no advanced organization allows such a concentration of key players on a single flight, for exactly this kind of reason. Did they have no such policy, or were they persuaded to ignore it, just this one time?
“What does it get him”?
The polish elite were headed to a ceremony commemorating the killing of thousands of Polish officers by Russia at the end of WWII.
Putin did not care to have this acknowledgement of Russian attrocities confirmed and splayed before to world to see.