In Kyiv, Volodymyr Zelensky and Olena Zelenska, as well as members of the Ukrainian government, paid their last respects on Saturday to Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, who died on Wednesday in a helicopter crash with 13 other people.
The aircraft had seven passengers, who worked at the Ministry of the Interior, and the accident claimed seven other victims, including a child.
President Zelensky and his wife Olena Zelenska came to the ceremony dressed in black, carrying bouquets of flowers, to comfort the families of the victims.
“An indescribable sadness covers the soul,” the president wrote in a message posted on Telegram on Saturday. “Ukraine is losing its best sons and daughters every day,” he added.
A “huge” loss
Inside the building where the ceremony took place, located very close to the Maidan square in the heart of Kyiv, seven coffins were carried, carried by soldiers in full regalia to the sound of a trumpet.
“The war had not broken them and they did not allow anyone else to be separated from them,” the ceremony leader said, addressing hundreds of people.
At the end of the ceremony, an intelligence officer, Ilya Samoilenko, considered the loss of these officials “enormous.”
“We can take two days and cry,” he said. “But we have to keep going. We have to keep going.”
A “criminal investigation” into the accident
Ukraine’s president announced Wednesday night that authorities had opened a “criminal investigation” into the accident.
“I gave instructions to the head of the Security Service of Ukraine, in cooperation with all other authorized bodies, to clarify all the circumstances of the disaster,” he further specified.
Asked Thursday about the possibility of an accident, Zelensky replied that “various theories are being studied.” “I am not authorized to speak about the various hypotheses until the results of the investigations,” he added.
The helicopter, an EC-225 Super Puma (Airbus Helicopters) according to the State Service for Emergency Situations (SES) to which it belonged, crashed Wednesday morning in Brovary, near Kyiv.
Source: BFM TV
