President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and scores of senior Polish politicians and government members have been killed in a plane crash in Russia. The deputy parliament speaker, the deputy foreign minister, head of the National Security Office, Poland's army chiefs, central bank governor, senators and members of parliament, families of Polish prisoners of war murdered in the village of Katyn during WWII were also among 97 victims. They were on their way to Katyn for the 70th anniversary of the massacre.

Hundreds of thousands gathered along the way from the airport to the presidential palace at Krakowskie Przedmiescie Street to honor of President Kaczynski.

The Katyn Forest massacre was a mass murder of many thousands of Polish prisoners of war (primarily military officers, intellectuals, and other public servants) by the Soviet NKVD, based on a proposal from Lavrentiy Beria to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps. Dated 5 March 1940, this official document was then approved (signed) by the entire Soviet Politburo including Joseph Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria. The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000, the most commonly cited number being 21,768.

The Katyn Forest massacre was the largest of the simultaneous executions of prisoners of war from geographically distant Starobelsk and Ostashkov camps, and the executions of political prisoners from West Belarus and West Ukraine, shot on Stalin's orders at Katyn Forest, at the NKVD headquarters in Smolensk, at a Smolensk slaughterhouse, and at prisons in Kalinin (Tver), Kharkov, Moscow, and other Soviet cities.