The BBC reports that a plane carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski has crashed near a Russian airport. The latest news on the World Service is that there were no survivors.The tragedy of such a disaster may not be especially noteworthy (what an awful way of putting things) given the plethora of terrible events. However, the misfortune of the crash seems compounded by the very reason the Polish president had been on in Russia, which was to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre of thousands of Poles by the Soviets.

I'll leave it to Mat to comment on the significance of the news and on how it's addressed in the Polish press.