Chimp remark angers Poles

POLES are fuming over a Russian aviation official’s remark that even if a chimpanzee had been running the control tower the day their president’s plane crashed in Russia the disaster would still be entirely their fault.

Media and officials widely condemned Oleg Smirnov’s remarks, broadcast live in Poland to a public still hurting over the April death of their president and 95 others — and indignant that a Russian report released last month placed the blame squarely on their countrymen.

Defence Minister Bogdan Klich called the remarks “propaganda,” while the Super Express tabloid said that “Russians again slander the Polish pilots.”

The Polish government admits that most of the blame for the crash in Smolensk, Russia, falls on the pilots’ decision to try to land in heavy fog, but believes failures by Russian air traffic controllers and the rudimentary state of the Russian air field were also factors.

On Thursday, Smirnov, a veteran Russian pilot, entered the fray: “Even if there weren’t a single air traffic controller in the tower at Smolensk and instead a chimpanzee sat there and in a language that is not understandable to any human being, to any nationality, gave out information in gibberish — even such an absurdity would not be a reason for the catastrophe.”