Ukraine honours inside minister killed in helicopter crash

AFP / Sergei Supinsky

A tearful Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attended a memorial service on Saturday to commemorate seven senior Interior Ministry officers killed in a helicopter crash this week.

This is a contemporary blow to a nation already grieving many who died within the conflict.

Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, his deputy and 5 different high-ranking ministry officers had been killed when their French-made Super Puma helicopter plummeted amid fog right into a nursery on the japanese outskirts of Kyiv on Wednesday.

Another seven folks had been killed, together with one little one, within the crash. Officials are nonetheless investigating the reason for the crash.

The helicopter went down simply days after at the least 45 folks had been killed in a Russian missile assault that partially levelled a block of flats within the southeastern metropolis of Dnipro.

On the battlefield, Ukrainian forces are heading off an unrelenting Russian onslaught within the east, the place Moscow has expended huge assets for incremental advances 11 months into its full-scale invasion.

“The indescribable sadness is covering the soul,” Zelenskiy wrote in a Telegram submit on Saturday. “Ukraine is losing its best sons and daughters every day.”

Zelenskiy and his spouse, Olena Zelenska, paid their respects to the victims’ family contained in the hulking Ukrainian House cultural centre in central Kyiv. A crowd of mourners snaked outdoors towards Independence Square.

Kyrylo Budanov, the navy intelligence chief, described Monastyrskyi’s loss of life as “a huge loss”.

“If not for (Monastyrskyi), everything could have been completely different,” he advised Ukrainian media, referring to the resistance Ukraine mounted after Moscow’s Feb. 24 assault.

“He is a true hero of this country.”

Monastyrskyi had been flying to a location close to the frontline, a police spokesperson stated on Thursday.