Strictly speaking, for the airport the Polish airplane was not military.
One would think for them - "military" is the ones who fall under the ? own various military laws of the Russian Federation. Have to perform Defense Ministry rules, under their jurisdiction.
Now, as, clearly, the Polish plane is not the? within the authority of the Russia's Defense Ministry - what "military" there is, about it?
An ordinary foreign plane, arriving.
As the category "ordinary" does not exist :o), I think for the airport - in their perception, the airplane was civil aviation.
How it is about the law interpretation - nobody knows. They are avia people there, not lawers. But, logically thinking, it's not the first head of a state, arriving into Russia. To put it softly. They all come over, all of the time, and in own aircrafts, and one would bet many if not all of those are part of respective countries' Air Forces.
So, is there a special rule for that kind of travel, ww. ?
For the "Bort Nomer Odin" in Russian parlance, Board Number One - head of a state carrier. ?
Somehow all these travel worldwide, land in airports, and all of the time. Without a special law on them, or, like, how? to be interpreted.
Sure it's not ordinary to land at military airports of other countries, normally they arrive in normal airports, and as big as possible. But then military airports accepting civil flights is not exactly a rarity either. Egypt's Khurgada used to be a military one, before, and became at some point for tourists, no idea their formal status. One would think there are some small countries :o) where nothing but military airports exist at all.
Smolensk, for that matter, is the other way around. It used to have normal civil airport, Southern/Juzhny - but that one is closed up! for repairs, or I don't know what. temporarily, or forever.
Air travel became so expensive post Perestroyka, absolutely un-affordable, it's not 20 roubles anymore but 2 thousand dollars, say, European part of Russia - to beyond Urals. One way. With salaries 300-400 dollars a month we simply stopped flying until absolutely have to. Or holidays, once a year. All the rest is by train, large train network, and working well. I think Smolensk people simply don't need 2 airports anymore, on what money, to fly? There aren't "bufget airlines here", and foreign budget are not alllowed to do Domestic. I think that's why they closed up Juzhny/South. And only the Northern left, by fact.
And no, I don't think they expected anyone else, that day, only 3 planes - journalists that is TV people - from Poland - to broadcast the mass, Catholic mass? it was to be a religious, like, spiritual event. Russian TV was there from the day before, it was to be a church service broadcasted simultaneously in 2 countries.
Then the Russian military plane, IL, carrying I don't know who, honestly.
May be Medvedev decided to arrive as well, last minute.
For the meeting Russian delegation was already there, from the day before, the representative on behalf of Medvedev, to meet President Kachinsky. These ran to the crash site first, the meeting delegation, before any fire-brigades were there, I think. 5 min run through the runway. Or together with the fire brigades, because those drove and meeting delegation from the airport small building - ran.
Journalists the bulk, as I understood, were not in the airport, but in Katyn monument, by the 4 churches there, Catholic - Rus. Orthodox - Jewish sinagogue and Lithuanian sorry not sure which religion. Ready to cover the church service broadcast for their respective Katyn massacre people. There are victims in all 4 congregations there in the cemetery, and it was to be like a religious event. Peace-making with Poland, from the spiritual, religious point of view, in a way.
We are awful lucky we were able to make some peace with Poland the previous week, on the civillian, how to say, side. At least, by one half.