Disaster on War’s Periphery
An Airbus H225 helicopter (formerly Eurocopter EC225 Super Puma) carrying an estimated nine passengers, including Ukraine’s interior minister Denys Monastyrskyi, went down in the Ukrainian city of Brovary, a suburb of the nation’s capital city of Kyiv.
The aircraft came to ground in the vicinity of a kindergarten and a multistory apartment building, killing three children and injuring another 11. In all the accident appears to have injured 25 persons, and claimed some 18 lives—including those of Minister Monastyrskyi, five Interior Ministry officials, one national police official, and all three helicopter crew members.
Ukrainian authorities are working to determine the cause of the mishap, which occurred in foggy conditions at approximately 08:00 EUT on the morning of 18 January 2023. Whether or not the accident is attributable to wartime belligerence remains unknown. No recent fighting has been reported within Kyiv's city limits.
First responders at the site of the impact and ensuing fire covered bodies with tarpaulins and worked to clear charred and mangled aircraft wreckage strewn between the apartment building and the kindergarten’s playground. On the adjacent street, the Super Puma’s blackened main rotor blades alternately protruded from a destroyed automobile and rested atop the entryway of a local building.
Kyiv regional Governor Oleksii Kuleba advised Ukrainian television outlets that the identification of bodies was ongoing, and that the death toll could rise.
Throughout the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, senior Ukrainian officials have routinely traveled by helicopter at low altitudes and high speeds. The loss of Minister Monastyrskyi and his staff may prompt civilian and military leaders to institute regulations prohibiting key officials from traveling aboard the same aircraft. Such rules are staples in many countries and organizations.
The parties aboard the downed helicopter were to visit Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region where fighting remains fierce. Monastyrskyi, 42, was in charge of police and emergency services tasked with mitigating the consequences of Russian military strikes and removing Russian land mines. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, pending the selection of Monastyrskyi successor, has named National Police Chief Ihor Klymenko Acting Interior Minister.
Airbus Helicopters, in the aftermath of a 2016 accident that killed 13 people, called for a worldwide halt in commercial operations of its H225/EC225 helicopters. The 2016 accident was ultimately attributed to metal fatigue in a second-stage planetary gear within the lost helicopter’s epicyclic module. Speculation that the 18 January 2023 Ukrainian accident was occasioned by a similar malfunction is without factual basis.
Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy somewhat obtusely set forth: “This is not an accident because it has been due to war and the war has many dimensions, not just on the battlefields. There are no accidents at wartime. These are all war results.”
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called the crash “heartbreaking.”
British Home Secretary Suella Braverman called Monastyrskyi “a leading light in supporting the Ukrainian people during Putin’s illegal invasion.” Braverman went on to claim she was “struck by his [Monastyrskyi’s] determination, optimism and patriotism.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz tweeted that the crash “shows once again the huge price that Ukraine is having to pay in this war.”
Moscow, meanwhile, defends its invasion of Ukraine via the repetition of a single question: “How would the U.S. respond if Canada or Mexico were to express intention of joining the Russian Federation and allowing Moscow to stage troops and armaments at the U.S. border?”
Ukraine and its Western allies reject Russia’s justifications, however, arguing Kyiv poses no threat to Moscow, and calling the Russian invasion “unprovoked.”
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