MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Ukraine's Interior Minister killed in helicopter crash

Monastyrskyi, a lawyer by profession, had been appointed in July 2021

Ukraine's Interior Minister Denis Monastyrskyi, Deputy Minister Yevgeny Yenin, and the ministry's state secretary Yurii Lubkovytch were among the 16 people killed Wednesday when a relief helicopter crashed in Brovary, a town of about 100,000 people in eastern Kyiv en route to “one of the hot spots in our country where fighting is going on,”

Local authorities also said that there were 29 other people wounded, including 15 children.

Monastyrskyi, who was in charge of the Ukrainian police and other emergency services, is the most senior Ukrainian official to have died since war broke out with Russia in February of 2022. Kyiv Regional Governor Oleksii Kuleba also said there were three children among the casualties.

President Volodimir Zelensky called the accident a “terrible tragedy” and Prime Minister Denis Chmigal announced that “a special group to investigate in detail the circumstances of the tragedy” was to be created. There were indications as to whether the crash was due to accidental circumstances or to a military attack, although no fighting has been reported recently in the Kyiv area. “For now, we are considering all possible versions of the helicopter crash accident,” Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, said on Telegram. The investigation is being carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine, he said.

Monastyrskyi, a lawyer by profession, had been in office since July 2021. In 2019 he was a deputy of the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, under the label “Servant of the People”, the presidential party.

Meanwhile, in Davos, Switzerland, First Lady Olena Zelenska was very emotional when addressing the World Economic Forum (WEF): “Another very sad day today — new losses,” she said.

Wednesday's crash came just four days after a Russian missile strike on an apartment building in southeastern Ukraine killing 45 civilians. “Haven’t had time to recover from one tragedy, there is already another one,” Tymoshenko also said.