 Investigators today revealed that there were passengers in the cockpit of the Polish government plane that crashed in Russia last month, fuelling speculation that the disaster may have been partly caused when high-ranking officials on board pressured pilots to land amid thick fog. The Russian air traffic controller Pavel Plusnin – who was the last person to talk to the crew of President Lech Kaczynski's Tupolev 154 before it crashed – said he had difficulties understanding the crew who he said spoke poor Russian. But Poland's former prime minister told the Guardian he thought Kaczynski – who was determined to reach Smolensk where he was due to attend a memorial service on the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre – may himself have contributed to the accident by pressuring the pilots to land in dense fog. The former social democrat prime minister Leszek Miller said: "The president had wanted so much to be there. The pilot knew this and so they accepted the risk and in the process lost everything," the former PM said. It is so far unclear why the pilots ignored warnings from Russian air traffic control and went ahead with an attempt to land at a military airport in western Russia.
– Passengers were in the cockpit of the plane carrying the Polish president before it crashed, say Russian investigators. The flight recorder has revealed the presence of one person who has been identified (the identity hasn't been made public), and at least one other, who "will be identified by the Polish side," an official from the Russian aviation authority tells the Guardian. The disclosure supports a theory that high-ranking officials forced the pilots to attempt a landing despite heavy fog. The crash has puzzled officials because the flight crew had been told about the bad weather and instructed to divert to Moscow or Minsk if conditions remained poor. Poland's former prime minister has said he thinks President Lech Kaczynski himself probably pressured the pilots to get him to Smolensk for a WWII ceremony.