To BOAC & janeczku
I never disagreed with you and am EXTREMELY critical of those who try to blame the ATC. (I thought I made it clear again and again).
I have a "slight" advantage of being fluent in 3 languages used, so I read the MAK transcripts as leaked to the press and do not have to rely on someone else's translations. This is critical because it is very easy to mistranslate things and even MAK people who prepared the transcript made many errors, most significant of them being translating ATC command "10:39:40 pasadka dopolniatelno" which they wrongly translated into Polish as "additional landing" instead of as "conditional landing/approach" which led to all sorts of nonsensical speculations.
As to discussion of the ravine, the exact statement in Polish is "Najgorsze tam jest, ze jest dziura, tam sa chmury, i wyszla mgla". The worst thing there is, that there is a hole there, clouds are there, and fog appeared." The repeat of "tam/there" makes it unlikely that the hole being talked about is some hole in the cloud. They are too far to see anything like that and it did not come up in any conversation with anybody on the ground. Also, if there was a "hole in the cloud" there, it would be a good thing, not the "worst thing" would it?
As to what exactly do they mean when they talk about navigator tinkering with TAWS 20 seconds after talking about that "hole" thing, we can only guess.
But, janeczku theory is correct in a sense that for that Tu-154 to get to be on that tree cutting path, they had to enter the goaround mode when the 2nd pilot commands it at 10:40:51. The autopilot is not disengaged up until 6 seconds later. Something must have been leveling the plane before that because they were pretty much following the ground when they started cutting the trees (that was 10 seconds after the goaround command).
If they thought they were given baro-like altitudes thus thinking they were on non-excessive angle path, there was absolutely no reason to panic at 10:40:51, because with the non-excessive descend rate and 100 m above runway, they had plenty of room to execute goaround on autopilot. Meaning, if pilot and 2nd pilot were under impression that they were being given barometric altitudes, they did everything by the book. They descended to DH, could not spot runway, and so executed the goaround.
As I said the navigator, undeniably, is at this point the weakest link, and here is why. Up until 1 year ago, Russians REQUIRED that every flight like that (except to large civilian international airports) had a Russian navigator on board (which they called lider/leader). He was the guy responsible for knowing all there was to know about the destination and responsible for all communication with ATC. The requirement was formally removed, but the 36 Regiment kept requesting the Russian "leaders". The politicians said "no" and some completely inexperienced guy was the navigator. And there could not be any navigators experienced in flying to Russian military airports because they never done it before without a Russian navigator onboard.
It all fits.