Ukraine’s interior minister was among 18 people, including four children, who were killed when a helicopter crashed near a kindergarten outside the capital Kyiv, officials said on Wednesday. In a video that circulated online from the aftermath of the incident, cries could be heard at the scene, which was consumed by a fire. The French-made Super Puma helicopter crashed in a residential area in the suburb of Brovary on the capital’s eastern outskirts, located some 20km (12 miles) northeast of Kyiv. The national police chief said that Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, who was appointed under President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2021, was killed. His first deputy, Yevheniy Yenin, and the ministry’s state secretary also died, he said. “As a result of the crash in Brovary, the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine was killed. They were in the helicopter of the State Emergency Service,” police chief Ihor Klymenko said. Monastyrsky, a 42-year-old father of two, would be the most senior Ukrainian official to die since the war began. The regional governor said 29 people were also hurt, including 15 children after the crash caused a large fire and an entire side of a nursery building was charred. “There were children and ... staff in the nursery at the time of this tragedy,” Kyiv region governor Oleksiy Kuleba wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “We saw wounded people, we saw children. There was a lot of fog here, everything was strewn all around. We could hear screams, we ran towards them,” Glib, a 17-year-old local resident, said at the scene. ‘Collapse of world’: Ukraine first lady Zelenska describes war’s horrors “We took the children and passed them over the fence, away from the nursery as it was on fire, especially the second floor,” he said. Medics, police and emergency workers were working at the scene where debris was scattered over a muddy playground, and a fleet of ambulances were on hand. In a courtyard lay several dead bodies wearing blue interior ministry uniforms and black boots, visible from under foil blankets draped over them. A large chunk of the aircraft had landed on a car, destroying it. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the crash a terrible tragedy, saying the full casualty toll was still being determined and he had instructed law enforcement bodies to launch an investigation into the circumstances of the crash and that emergency services were doing all they could on the scene. “Today, a terrible tragedy occurred in Brovary, Kyiv region. A SES (state emergency services) helicopter crashed, and a fire broke out at the crash site. “As of this minute, three children died. The pain is unspeakable,” he said in a statement on social media. The presidency said that the aircraft was en route to the frontline in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine outrage: child’s body found in Dnipro rubble, 41 dead, 25 missing Ukrainian officials said it was not immediately clear what had caused the helicopter to crash. There was no immediate comment from Russia, which invaded Ukraine last February, and Ukrainian officials made no reference to any Russian attack in the area at the time. “Unfortunately, the sky does not forgive mistakes, as pilots say, but it’s really too early to talk about the causes,” air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat said, adding it could take at least several weeks to investigate the disaster. <!--//--><![CDATA[// ><!-- !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(e){if(void 0!==e.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var a in e.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r<t.length;r++){if(t[r].contentWindow===e.source)t[r].style.height=e.data["datawrapper-height"][a]+"px"}}}))}(); //--><!]]> Monastyrskyi, 42, a lawyer and lawmaker appointed in 2021 to run the ministry with responsibility for the police, was the most senior Ukrainian official to die since the war began. Russian and Ukrainian forces fought for control of Brovary in the early stages of Moscow’s invasion until Russia’s troops withdrew in early April. Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops to pro-Western Ukraine on February 24 last year. The crash came on the heels of a tragedy that saw 45 people including six children die when a Russian missile struck a residential building in the eastern city of Dnipro at the week.
