There were some doubts expressed in the Russian forums, re who was the commander of the plane, as from the Polish official obitary site it follows the commander was in the captain's rank, while his officer - in the major's rank.
Vasily Ershov, author of the text book on piloting TU-154, whose opinion of what happened was quoted @580 here, was more interested in the navigator skills. He wrote TU-154 landing absolutely demands team work overall, and he thinks the pilot did not get adequate support.
Which was needed, given the approach from the East, from below the airport height, the airplane was rising towards the stripe, in the terrain of 2 hills, one low river-bed, and in dense fog.
There was also an opinion expressed that when cruising around previously, the elevation on which the airport is located was not spotted, because it is no elevation, if to look at it from the West. But even ground, with one Eastern slope down, towards the river bed.
And that the pilot could see the airport, for a short while, getting out of clouds, and before diving into pre-ground fog. As he could have thought he simply sees the runway, and dived down into what seemed to him not specially bad fog. But it exactly was dense pre-ground fog, on the Eastern low side, right by the surface. And began cutting trees there, blind.
Still, how he lost a wing is unclear, all say what's a birch tree for a TU.
Having lost the wing the airplane seemingly turned over later, that's why no survivors. TU-204 "landed" in a similar "fashion", in Moscow, recently, cut all trees there were, but didn't turn over, and no casualties at all.