At least sixteen people, including Ukraine’s interior minister and three children, were killed when a helicopter crashed near a nursery school in Kyiv on Wednesday, officials said.
Oleksiy Kuleba, head of the regional administration of the Ukrainian capital, said in Telegram that 29 people were also injured, including 15 children, when the helicopter crashed in Brovary, eastern suburbs.
It was not immediately clear whether the crash was an accident or related to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. There has been no fighting in the Kyiv region since April, when Russian forces retreated after failing to capture the capital.
“Today there was a terrible tragedy in Brovary. The pain is unspeakable. The helicopter fell on the territory of one of the kindergartens,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in Telegram. “I have instructed the Security Service of Ukraine, in cooperation with the National Police of Ukraine and other official bodies, to find out the whole situation that happened.”
“The cause of the tragedy was established. Whether it was sabotage, technical malfunction, violation of aviation safety rules, we will find out,” said Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the interior ministry.
The helicopter belonged to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine, which said the crash happened at 8:20 a.m. A building belonging to the emergency services, a 14-storey residential building and three vehicles were destroyed, along with a nursery school. A fire broke out at the scene but was put out an hour later, according to the SES.
Ihor Klymenko, the head of the national police, wrote on Facebook that Denys Monastyrsky, the interior minister, as well as his deputy Yevhen Yenin and state secretary Yuriy Lubkovich, a senior ministry official, were killed. Zelenskyy called all three “true patriots of Ukraine”.
Klymenko said all nine adults in the helicopter when it crashed were among the dead. Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said the official was on a “business trip” to one of the “hot spots” on the front line.
Tymoshenko called on witnesses to the accident to come forward immediately to help clarify the circumstances of the tragedy.
Videos and photos shared by authorities show the wreckage of a helicopter near the building’s entrance and bodies on the ground nearby.
Yuriy Ignat, an air force spokesman, said the helicopter was an AS332 Super Puma supplied to Ukraine by France. Ignat said the helicopters were intended specifically for the SES and the interior ministry and were used for “closer to hostilities” tasks.
A lawyer by training, Monastyrsky, 42, was born in the western city of Khmelnytskyi. He was elected to the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) on the Servant of the People Zelenskyy party ticket in 2019, and is the chairman of the parliamentary committee on law enforcement. He was appointed to head the interior ministry in July 2021. He is a close ally of the president and makes regular trips with Zelenskyy to visit Ukrainian troops on the front lines.
Yenin, 42, is also a lawyer by training. He worked in foreign security and intelligence services before becoming a diplomat. From 2016 to 2019, he was deputy attorney general, and deputy foreign minister from 2020 to 2021. He began his role at the interior ministry in September 2021.
Lubkovich, 33, from the western Ternopil region, was appointed to the ministry on November 17, 2021.
Additional reporting by Roman Olearchyk in Kyiv