Ukraine’s Interior Minister Killed in Helicopter Crash

Date: 18 January 2023 - 22:03

News ID: ۱۱۱۵۰۴

KYIV (Dispatches) -- Ukraine’s interior minister was among more than a dozen people killed in a helicopter crash Wednesday near a kindergarten outside Kyiv, spurring condolences from allies.
Officials initially said that 18 people had died but later revised the toll down to 16, including one of the minister’s deputies and three children.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the crash of the helicopter, which was en route to the frontline in eastern Ukraine, as a “terrible tragedy.”
There was no immediate claim from Kyiv that Russian forces were involved in downing the aircraft and an investigation has been launched into the cause.
The helicopter carrying Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky slammed down next to a kindergarten and a residential building in Brovary, a commuter town for the capital Kyiv that was the scene of fierce fighting with Russian forces last year.
The head of Ukraine’s police service, Igor Klymenko, said in a statement that both Monastyrsky and his first deputy, Yevgeniy Yenin, were killed.
Thirty people including 12 children were hospitalized.
Klymenko from Ukraine’s police service said that nine of those killed were on board the helicopter when it crashed.
The presidency said that the aircraft was en route to the frontline in eastern Ukraine.
Zelensky said he had instructed law enforcement bodies to launch an investigation into the circumstances of the crash and that emergency services were doing all they could on the scene.
Monastyrsky, 42, a trained lawyer, had served as Ukraine’s interior minister from July 2021. He was a key member of Zelensky’s party and was married with two children.
The crash came on the heels of a tragedy that saw 45 people including six children die when a Russian missile struck a residential building in the eastern city of Dnipro at the weekend.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday he had “no doubt” Moscow would emerge victorious in Ukraine.
Victory was “guaranteed, I have no doubt about it,” Vladimir Putin told workers at a factory in Russia’s second city Saint Petersburg.
“The unity and solidarity of the Russian people, the courage and heroism of our fighters and, of course, the work of the military-industrial sector” will secure victory, he added.
Vladimir Putin also praised

the Russian defense industry as he spoke at the plant, which is part of Russian missile manufacturer Almaz-Antey.

President Putin was visiting his native Saint Petersburg to mark the 80th anniversary of Soviet forces breaking the siege of Leningrad as the city was known at the time.

Putin once again defended his goals in Ukraine, where he initially sent troops to “de-Nazify” the pro-Western country. “We are absolutely justified in saying that we are fighting neo-Nazism,” he said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also said the United States had assembled a coalition of European countries to solve “the Russian question” in the same way that Adolf Hitler had sought a “final solution” to eradicate Europe’s Jews.

Lavrov said Washington was using the same tactic as Napoleon and the Nazis in trying to subjugate Europe in order to destroy Russia.

Using Ukraine as a proxy, he said, “they are waging war against our country with the same task: the ‘final solution’ of the Russian question”.

“Just as Hitler wanted a ‘final solution’ to the Jewish question, now, if you read Western politicians ... they clearly say Russia must suffer a strategic defeat.”

Lavrov also said Wednesday that Russia had not seen any “serious proposals” from the West on solving the Ukraine conflict.

“We are ready to respond to any serious proposals,” he said. “But we haven’t seen any yet.”

He defended the Kremlin’s aims in its 11-month offensive in Ukraine.

“They are not made up, not just taken from thin air, but goals determined by fundamental, legitimate security interests of the Russian Federation.”

U.S. Redirecting Munitions to Ukraine

The United States is diverting munitions stored in Israel to Ukraine for use in the war against Russia, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, saying the decision was made last year.

An Israeli official confirmed the report to Reuters, saying that then-prime minister Yair Lapid approved the transfer although the United States does not formally need such consent.

For decades, the Pentagon has stored munitions in Occupied Palestine to serve as emergency resupplies for the Zionist regime in wartime - or for handover to other U.S. allies.

According to the New York Times, the munitions Washington decided to move to Ukraine are around 300,000 155-millimetre artillery shells. Around half of that has been sent to Europe for redistribution to Ukraine, the newspaper said.