Ukraine’s interior minister and a number of other senior officials have been killed in a helicopter crash the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, called a “terrible tragedy”.
Officials said that 14 people died – including a child on the ground – as the aircraft came down in the grounds of a nursery in Brovary, an eastern suburb of Kyiv.
The country’s interior minister Denys Monastyrskyi, who oversaw Ukraine’s police and emergency services, is the most senior Kyiv official to die since Russia invaded nearly 11 months ago. Mr Monastyrskyi’s first deputy, Yevhen Yenin, and the interior ministry's state secretary, Yurii Lubkovych, also died in the crash.
There was no immediate word on whether the helicopter crash, which occurred on a foggy morning, was related to the war, but Mr Zelensky made the connection during a video address to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos Switzerland.
“This is not an accident because it has been due to war and the war has many dimensions, not just on the battlefields,” he said after asking the Davos audience to stand and join him in a minute of silence to honour those killed. “There are no accidents at wartime. These are all war results.”
Ukraine’s the SBU state security service said it was investigating possible causes of the crash, including “a breach of flight rules, a technical malfunction and the intentional destruction of the helicopter”. Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said that 25 people have been injured, including 11 children.
Mr Zelensky had earlier described the crash as “a terrible tragedy” on a “black morning” in a post on Telegram. “The pain is unspeakable,” he wrote. Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska was seen with teary eyes following news of the fatal crash, having attended the forum at Davos in person.
The interior minister’s death cuts to the heart of Kyiv’s government, with the interior ministry being responsible for maintaining security within Ukraine and running the police during Russia’s invasion.
Wreckage from the helicopter lay outside a burning building and a fire broke out close to the nursery as children and staff were evacuated from the building. The crash caused a large fire, and an entire side of the nursery building was charred.
“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, told Reuters on the scene.
Nine of those killed were aboard the emergency services helicopter. The Ukraine National Police said the crash killed five Interior Ministry officials, one national police official and three crew members.
“The delegation was heading to a hot spot,” the regional police chief Volodymyr Tymoshko said of the helicopter’s destination which was confirmed to be Kharkiv.
“Today I was supposed to welcome, to shake hands with, to meet... not only the leaders, no, but friends whom I respected and awaited,” Mr Tymoshko wrote on Facebook – adding that their deaths are “an irreparable loss”.
The national police chief, Ihor Klymenko has been appointed acting interior minister, the prime minister, Denys Shmyhal said.
Mr Monastyrskyi, 42, was a trained lawyer and politician who won a seat in the 2019 parliamentary election representing Mr Zelensky’s party. He served as head of the parliamentary Committee on Law Enforcement Affairs before becoming interior minister. He took up his current role in July 2021.
The UK home secretary, Suella Braverman, called Mr Monastyrskyi “a leading light in supporting the Ukrainian people” during Russia’s invasion and said she was struck by his determination, optimism and patriotism.
It comes as Ukraine reported intense fighting overnight in the east of the country, where both sides have taken huge losses for little gain in intense trench warfare over the last two months.
In his speech to the attendees at Davos, Mr Zelensky said supplies of tanks, and air defence systems should come more quickly and be delivered faster than Moscow is able to carry out attacks. The helicopter crash comes days after more than 40 people were killed in the central city of Dnipro, the civilian death toll from a missile that struck an apartment block on Saturday.
Western allies will be gathering on Friday at a US air base in Germany to pledge more weapons for Ukraine. Attention is focused in particular on Germany, which has veto power over any decision to send its Leopard tanks, which are fielded by armies across Europe and widely seen as the most suitable for Ukraine.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who is facing increasing pressure to sign off the sending of the tanks to Ukraine, tweeted that the helicopter crash “shows once again the huge price that Ukraine is having to pay in this war”.
Russian president Vladimir Putin, visiting an air defence factory in St Petersburg, said Russia’s military industrial might meant “victory is assured, I have no doubt about it”.
The country’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, also said Moscow saw no prospects of peace talks and there could be no negotiations with Mr Zelensky.
Reuters contributed to this report
