Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said earlier this year he wanted to make a trip to western Russia in April to mark 10 years since an air crash that killed a Polish president and 95 others near the city of Smolensk.
Morawiecki said at the time he also wanted to visit the nearby Katyn Forest to commemorate the victims of a 1940 massacre of Polish officers and intellectuals by the Soviets.
Michał Dworczyk, a right-hand man to Morawiecki, told reporters on Friday that the planned trip by a delegation of Polish government officials and parliamentarians was being rescheduled after Russia failed to give an "unequivocal" answer about the "logistic assumptions" of the visit.
The visit will take place at a later date, Dworczyk, who heads the Polish prime minister’s office, said.
Dworczyk told reporters in late February that Poland was in talks with Moscow on holding commemorations in western Russia to mark 10 years since the fatal crash of the Polish presidential plane.
April 10, 2020 will mark exactly 10 years since a Polish plane carrying President Lech Kaczyński, his wife and 94 others, including top political and military figures, crashed near Smolensk, western Russia, killing all those on board.
The disaster has scarred the national psyche and is still a source of controversy and recrimination in Poland.
The Polish officials were on their way to commemorate some 22,000 Polish prisoners of war and intellectuals who were killed in the spring of 1940 on orders from top Soviet authorities in what is known as the Katyn Massacre.
(gs/pk)
Source: IAR, PAP