Ukraine interior min, his deputy killed in helicopter crash near Kyiv region

KYIV – Ukraine’s interior minister and his deputy have been killed in a helicopter crash near a kindergarten outside the Ukrainian capital Kiev, The Moscow Times quoted Ukrainian authorities as saying on Wednesday.

Eighteen people including Ukraine’s interior minister, other senior ministry officials and three children were killed on Wednesday morning when a helicopter crashed near a nursery outside Kyiv, Ukrainian officials said.

The helicopter came down close to the nursery and a residential building in Brovary to the north-east of the capital, local officials said.

The regional governor said 29 people were also hurt, including 15 children.

Several dead bodies draped in foil blankets lay in a courtyard near the damaged nursery. Emergency workers were at the scene. Debris was scattered over a playground.

National police chief Ihor Klymenko said Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, who was appointed under President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2021, was killed. His first deputy, Mr 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,”Mr Klymenko said.

Mr Monastyrskyi, responsible for the police and security inside Ukraine, would be the most senior Ukrainian official to die since the war began.

Videos shared on social media showed a burning building and people could be heard screaming.

“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.

It was not immediately clear what caused the helicopter to crash.

There was no immediate comment from Russia, whose troops invaded Ukraine last February, and Ukrainian officials made no reference to any Russian attack in the area at the time.

“Unfortunately this happened with a state emergency service helicopter which was fulfilling its task,” Air force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat told Apostrof TV.