DailyExpertNews
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A helicopter crash near a kindergarten in the Kiev region has killed at least 18 people, including the entire team of leaders of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, according to officials.
At least 29 others were injured in the incident in the town of Brovary, on the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital, on Wednesday, according to Oleksiy Kuleba, head of the Kiev regional military administration.
Interior Minister Denis Monastyrsky, First Deputy Minister Yevheniy Yenin and Foreign Minister Yuriy Lubkovychis were killed in the crash, Anton Geraschenko, an adviser to the ministry, confirmed on social media.
The nine people on board the plane died, while the other victims were local residents who “brought their children to kindergarten,” said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, head of Ukraine’s presidential administration.
Kuleba, speaking to reporters at the scene with Tymoshenko, added: “there is currently no information on the number of missing children. The identification is in progress. Parents come, lists are compiled.”
A DailyExpertNews team on the ground in the Kiev region noted gray skies and very poor visibility.
The helicopter that crashed was a Eurocopter EC225 “Super Puma,” a DailyExpertNews producer confirmed after seeing remnants of flight manuals among the debris.
It landed near a kindergarten and a residential building, Kuleba said earlier.
“At the time of the tragedy, there were children and staff in the kindergarten. At this point, everyone was evacuated,” he wrote on Telegram.
Paramedics, police and firefighters are responding to the scene, Kuleba added.
In a written statement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the crash “a terrible tragedy”, adding that he has ordered Ukrainian security services to “find out all the circumstances”.
Zelensky ended his statement by saying that the officials were “true patriots of Ukraine”. May they rest in peace! May all those whose lives were taken this black morning rest in peace!
Charles Michel, President of the European Council, also paid tribute to Monastyrsky as “a great friend of the EU”. Michel tweeted that the European Union joins Ukraine “in sorrow after the tragic Brovary helicopter crash.”
In April 2022, Monastyrsky took DailyExpertNews’s Fred Pleitgen to Chernobyl to visit abandoned Russian military positions where radioactive contamination had been revealed.