At least 18 people, including the Minister of the Interior of Ukraine and three children, died Wednesday in the accident of a helicopter on the outskirts of Kiev when he was heading to the front line of the war with Russia.
“The objective of the flight (was to go) to one of the hot spots of our country where fighting is taking place,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Kirilo Timoshenko said. “The interior minister was on his way there,” he added.
According to a message from the region’s governor, Oleksii Kuleba, there were also “29 injuries, including 15 children.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky called the accident a “terrible tragedy”. “The pain is indescribable,” she added.
Prime Minister Denis Chmigal announced, for his part, that he had given instructions to create “a special group to investigate in detail the circumstances of the tragedy.”
In the images that circulated on social networks, you could see the remains of the helicopternear a car destroyed under the weight of metal.
Among the fatalities are Interior Minister Denis Monastirski, 42, his deputy minister Yevgeny Jenin and the ministry’s State Secretary, Yurii Lubkovytch, who were on board the device along with six other people, the police chief said. Ukrainian national in a statement.
Monastirski, 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 of “Servant of the people”, the presidential party.
The accident took place in Brovary, a city of about 100,000 inhabitants in eastern Kiev. In the first weeks of the invasion, when russian troops They were trying to get closer to the Ukrainian capital, there was a lot of fighting in this town.
At the time of the drama, “there were children and employees at the kindergarten,” Kuleba said.
New tragedy in Ukraine
After the accident, one of the first to react was the President of the European Council, Charles Michel. “We joined Ukraine in pain after the tragic helicopter crash (…) Monastirski was a great friend of the EU,” the person in charge tweeted.
According to images published on social networks, a huge fire broke out after the helicopter fell. For now, the cause of the accident has not been disclosed.
The aircraft belonged to the state service for emergencies under the Ministry of the Interior, according to a spokesman for the Ukrainian air force.
This new tragedy takes place in the middle of the war with Russiaand four days after a deadly Russian attack on Dnipro in eastern Ukraine.
A Russian missile destroyed a residential building on Saturday, causing at least 45 deaths, including six minors. This was one of the deadliest bombings since the start of the Russian invasion, in February 2022.
The youngest victim was 11 months old, Timoshenko lamented Tuesday night, after more than three days of searches. Under the rubble, emergency teams managed to get some survivors between huge concrete blocks.
This attack against a civilian target caused a great commotion among the Ukrainian population. Zelensky vowed that “every person guilty of this war crime” would be brought to justice and accused the Russian army of the massacre. RussiaFor her part, she denied being involved in the attack.