Ukrainian authorities on Thursday continued the criminal investigation ordered by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the day before after Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky died when his helicopter crashed, killing at least 14 people.
“The Security Service of Ukraine has opened a criminal investigation into this terrible incident,” Zelenskyy said in a speech on Wednesday evening.
“I instructed the head of the Security Service of Ukraine to clarify all the circumstances of the disaster in cooperation with all other authorized bodies,” he said.
The helicopter, a Super Puma EC-225 (Airbus Helicopters), according to the State Emergency Situations Service (SES) to which it belonged, crashed in Brovary near Kyiv on Wednesday morning.
According to the same source, nine people were on board the plane, including the minister and his deputy. According to a recent report attributed to the same source, 14 people died, including a child, and 25 were hospitalized, including 11 children, injured.
“For now, the head of the National Police of Ukraine will be the head of the ministry. We also shared out the responsibilities assigned to the minister within the framework of our defense operation and ensuring state security,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy added.
On site, AFP journalists saw debris near residential buildings, a door, two crushed cars. And bodies were wrapped up and carried one by one on a stretcher to a van.
“Our pain is indescribable”
This crash, which came four days after a Russian missile attack that killed 45 people in Dnipro, eastern Ukraine, stirred great emotions.
Ukrainian officials, like Prime Minister Denys Khmygal on Telegram, described the death of 42-year-old Denys Monastyrsky, a former lawyer who joined Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s party, as a “great loss”.
In Washington, President Joe Biden and his wife Jill “mourn with all the bereaved of this heartbreaking tragedy,” the White House said. The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, lamented the death of a “great friend of the EU” on Twitter.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland), NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg assured that the member countries of his organization would supply Kyiv with “heavier and more modern” weapons.
The Contact Group for Ukraine, which brings together some 50 countries led by the United States, met Friday at the American base in Ramstein, Germany, to coordinate continued aid to Kyiv.
“The main message will be increased support with heavier and more modern weapons,” Stoltenberg said.
Shortly before, the Ukrainian president launched a “call to speed up” decision-making in support of Ukraine via video conference, while Germany in particular has been reluctant to authorize the delivery of Leopard tanks to the country.
“Tyranny advances faster than democracies,” lamented Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “The time the free world spends thinking is spent by a terrorist state killing.”
The Leopards are among the modern, Western-designed heavy tanks that Kyiv is demanding from its allies and that experts say will be crucial in the upcoming fighting in eastern Ukraine.
On the other hand, the United States is unwilling to provide Ukraine with its most advanced heavy tanks, a senior Pentagon official told the Abrams on Wednesday, citing maintenance and training problems as the reason for the refusal.
Russia, meanwhile, whose armed forces have suffered huge losses and serious military setbacks in recent months, continued to exert pressure both on the front lines in eastern Ukraine, where its army is trying to regain the advantage, only through statements from the Kremlin.
On the humanitarian front, the new President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Mirjana Spoljaric, travels to Moscow on Thursday and Friday to meet with Russian government officials and discuss urgent humanitarian needs and access to prisoners of war, a trip that is turning will follow its mission to Ukraine in December, according to a press release.