So the biggest problem Kaczynski was for Russia was that they were worried he was going to go and get himself killed? For sure it was that, yes. And it was not just a problem for Russia, it was also a problem for NATO.
Last month, I interviewed Maxim Samorukov, Deputy Editor of Carnegie.ru and an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Moscow Centre.
We discussed relations between Poland and Russia between 2007 and 2010, when Poland’s executive branch was divided between Law and Justice President Lech Kaczynski and Civic Platform Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the domestic and foreign policy context of the Smolensk catastrophe, and the Kremlin’s view of Poland’s present Law and Justice government, including the possibility of future co-operation.
‘The Ghosts of Smolensk’, an article I wrote for Foreign Policy’s Democracy Lab about President Kaczynski’s contested legacy , can be found here.