"The Security Service of Ukraine has opened a criminal investigation into this terrible event," the Ukrainian president said in a speech Wednesday evening.
The Ukrainian authorities thus began on Thursday an orderly criminal investigation intended to shed light on the circumstances of the death of Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky.
The latter lost his life in the crash of his helicopter which killed at least 14 people.
“I instructed 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.
The helicopter, a Super Puma EC-225 (Airbus Helicopters) according to the State Service for Emergency Situations (SES) to which it belonged, crashed on Wednesday morning in Brovary, near kyiv.
“Several theories” are being evaluated, the president said on Thursday.
“The investigation is ongoing.
Several theories are being studied and I am not authorized to speak about the various hypotheses until the outcome of the investigations, ”explained the leader who spoke by videoconference at the Davos Forum.
According to the same source, nine people were on board the aircraft, including the minister and his deputy.
According to a latest report attributed to the same source, 14 people died, including a child, and 25 injured were hospitalized, including 11 children.
“The head of the national police of Ukraine will be the head of the ministry for the time being.
We also distributed the responsibilities that fell to the minister in the framework of our defense operation and ensuring state security,” Volodymyr Zelensky added.
On the spot, AFP journalists saw debris near apartment buildings, a door, two crushed cars.
And bodies wrapped up and taken on a stretcher, one by one, to a van.
“Our pain is unspeakable”
This crash, which occurred four days after a Russian missile strike that killed 45 people in Dnipro, in eastern Ukraine, aroused great emotion.
Ukrainian officials, like Prime Minister Denys Chmygal on Telegram, called the death of Denys Monastyrsky, 42, a former lawyer who joined Volodymyr Zelensky's party, a "great loss".
In Washington, President Joe Biden and his wife Jill "mourn with all those bereaved by this heartbreaking tragedy," the White House said.
The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, lamented on Twitter the death of "a great friend of the EU".
At the World Economic Forum in Davos (Switzerland), NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg assured that the member countries of his organization would provide kyiv with "heavier and more modern" weapons.
The Contact Group for Ukraine, which brings together some 50 countries led by the United States, met on Friday at the American base in Ramstein in Germany to coordinate continued aid to kyiv.
"The main message will be increased support with heavier and more modern weapons," Stoltenberg said.
Shortly before, the Ukrainian president had launched by videoconference a "call for speed" in decision-making to help Ukraine, while Germany in particular is reluctant to authorize the delivery of Leopard tanks to the country.
“Tyranny advances faster than democracies,” lamented Volodymyr Zelensky.
"The time the free world uses to think is used by a terrorist state to kill."
