kyiv, Ukraine.- Ukraine’s interior minister died Wednesday in a helicopter crash near the capital that killed at least 14 others, including other officials and three minors, authorities said.
Denys Monastyrskyi, the country’s top police and other emergency services official, is the highest-ranking Ukrainian official to die since the Russian invasion that began nearly 11 months ago. His death, along with that of two other senior officials in his ministry, is the second tragedy to hit Ukraine in four days, following a Russian missile attack that left dozens of civilians dead in an apartment building.
It was not immediately known whether the fire, which occurred near a kindergarten, was an accident or the result of war. No recent fighting has been reported in the kyiv area.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky called the crash “a terrible tragedy” on a “black morning.”
“The pain is indescribable,” he wrote on Telegram.
British Home Secretary Suella Braverman called Monastyrskyi “a beacon in support of the Ukrainian people during Putin’s illegal invasion” and said she was “impressed by her determination, optimism and patriotism.”
Also among the dead were Deputy Minister Yevhen Yenin and State Secretary of the Interior Ministry Yurii Lubkovych, said Ihor Klymenko, head of the Ukrainian National Police. Since the conflict began, senior officials have often traveled by helicopter.
Nine of the dead were on board the helicopter that crashed in Brovary, an eastern suburb of kyiv, Klymenko said. The others would have lost their lives on the ground.
The governor of the kyiv region, Oleksii Kuleba, reported 18 deaths, including three minors, and 25 injuries. But the count of the Emergency Service contemplated only 15 deaths. It could not immediately be confirmed if the data was old or if the figure had been revised.
At the scene of the accident, at least four bodies lay on the floor covered by isothermal blankets while workers removed the remains of the helicopter from the kindergarten patio. There were also pieces of fuselage on a charred vehicle and a building.
“It is too early to talk about the reasons” for the accident, Yurii Ihnat, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, told a television station. The investigation could take a while.
The helicopter was a Super Puma sent by France, he added.
