Poland suffered its greatest peacetime tragedy yesterday when its president and dozens of other leading figures were killed in a plane crash in Russia after their pilot ignored warnings not to land in thick fog.

President Lech Kaczynski, 60, his wife Maria, an economist, and 95 others died on their way to commemorate the massacre of 22,000 Polish prisoners at Katyn in 1940 by Stalin’s secret police.

Instead of diverting, as advised, the pilot of the 20- year-old plane tried and failed to land at least once, before clipping trees and plunging into a forest.

Air traffic controllers watched their screens with growing unease as the Soviet-era Tupolev descended into the fog that hung like a shroud over the military airfield at Smolensk in western Russia.