BERLIN-Germany offered Kyiv assistance in investigating a helicopter crash near Kyiv on Wednesday that killed Ukraine’s interior minister along with over a dozens others, as Chancellor Olaf Scholz offered his condolences.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement that she had sent her sympathies to the Ukrainian government “and offered Germany’s support in identifying the causes of the helicopter crash”.
Scholz noted later in a tweet that the accident showed the “immense price” Ukraine was paying “in this war”.
“Our thoughts on this sad day are with the victims’ loved ones and the injured,” as well as with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “who lost his interior minister today”. 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.
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Officials said 16 people were killed, including one of the minister’s deputies and three children.
Zelensky described the crash of the helicopter, which was en route to the frontline in eastern Ukraine, as a “terrible tragedy.”