Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has arrived at the scene of the plane crash in which Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 96 other people perished earlier on Saturday.
The plane carrying Kaczynski, his wife, and a delegation of senior officials crashed while attempting to land in thick fog at an airport in west Russia's Smolensk. The plane was taking the president to a memorial ceremony for Polish officers killed by Soviet secret police in 1940.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev earlier named Putin head of a commission on the disaster.
The Russian premier is accompanied by a number of senior officials, including Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu, Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov and Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev.
Putin earlier said that bodies of the crash victims would be transported for identification to the Russian capital.
He also called his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk to express "his condolences to him personally and the entire Polish nation in regard to the tragic airplane crash near Smolensk," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
SMOLENSK, April 10 (RIA Novosti)
