Denys Monastyrsky lost his life, along with 13 other people, this Wednesday in the crash of the helicopter transporting him to the front line. Minister of the Interior of Ukraine since July 2021, the forties was a lawyer and a follower of Volodymyr Zelensky.
The crash of a helicopter near the city of Brovary, east of kyiv, killed at least 14 people on Wednesday according to the latest assessment made by the Ukrainian authorities. Among these victims, we deplore a child but also three high dignitaries of the State: the secretary of the Ministry of the Interior, the first deputy to the minister, and the Minister of the Interior himself, Denys Monastyrsky. The three men were going to the front held against the Russian enemy.
While Volodymyr Zelensky launched an investigation to shed light on the nature of this tragedy, BFMTV.com looked into the personality and political itinerary of the late Minister of the Interior.
A lawyer with a very full CV
Denys Monastyrsky was 42 years old. He was indeed born in 1980 in Khmelnitski, in the west of the country. It was in this city, which had 264,988 inhabitants before the war, that he completed most of his studies: Denys Monastyrsky was a lawyer by training – he had even obtained a doctorate in law – and began to plead in 2007 according to a portrait compiled by a Ukrainian news agency.
According to this biographical note, he practiced in the offices of Hillmont Partners, Global Ties KC, Legal Consulting LLC. Alongside this busy professional career, he was married and the father of two boys, precise Le Figaro.
Recently entered politics
His entry into politics was relatively late. And at first discreet: Denys Monastyrsky took his first steps there in 2014 as a collaborator of MP Anton Heraschenko – who will be his deputy interior minister for a few weeks upon his own appointment in 2021.
In 2019, it was his turn to be elected deputy to the Rada, under the banner of “Servant of the people”, the largely unclassifiable movement of Volodymyr Zelensky and which moreover takes its name from the series which established the celebrity of the latter.
“Sacrifice”
Finally, he was propelled Minister of the Interior on July 16, 2021. Taking office, he had spoken of his charge with seriousness according to this declaration recorded at the time by the Ukrainian Interfax news agency:
“I can tell you that answering ‘yes’ to the president’s proposal to entrust me with the direction of the Ministry of the Interior was the most difficult decision of my life”. He said then “to measure the extent of the sacrifice to be made”.
However, this was before the war, and 18 months before his death.
