Ukraine’s interior minister died on Wednesday in a helicopter crash near the capital that killed more than a dozen other people, including children, authorities said.
Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi, who oversaw Ukraine’s police and emergency services, is the most senior official to die since Russia invaded nearly 11 months ago.
His death, along with two others from his ministry, was the second calamity in four days for Ukraine, after a Russian missile strike on an apartment building killed dozens of civilians. There was no immediate word on whether the morning crash, near a kindergarten and reportedly in heavy fog, was an accident or related to the war, but Ukrainian authorities immediately opened an investigation. No fighting has been reported recently in the Kyiv area.
