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Ukraine: a helicopter crashes near a school in the Kiev region, 18 dead including the Minister of the Interior
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Sylvie Claire / January 20, 2023
A helicopter crashed Wednesday morning near a school in the Kiev region, killing 18 people including the interior minister and three children, a new tragedy in Ukraine a few days after a deadly Russian strike in Dnipro.
Tragedy in Brovary. The number of victims has increased. At 10:30 a.m., 18 dead, including 3 children,” said the governor of the region, Oleksiy Kulba, on Telegram. He said that “there are also 29 injured, including 15 children,” raising fears of an even heavier toll.
On images circulating on social networks, one could see the remains of the helicopter mixed with debris, close to a car destroyed under the weight of metal. Firemen and police officers were on the scene, according to an AFP team.
Among the victims were Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, 42, his first deputy Yevgeny Yenin, and the ministry’s state secretary Yuriy Lubkovich, who were on board the aircraft along with six other people, the head of the Ukrainian national police said in a statement. “My colleagues, my friends. What a tragic loss. Sincere condolences to their families,” Anton Gerachtchenko, an adviser to Monastyrsky, reacted on Twitter.
The purpose of this flight (was to go) to one of the hot spots in our country where the fighting is going on. The Minister of the Interior was going there,” Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the presidential office, told Ukrainian television.
This former lawyer by profession was in office since July 2021. He had become a deputy in the Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, in 2019 under the label “Servant of the People”, the presidential party.
The crash took place in Brovary, a city of some 100,000 inhabitants that touches the eastern suburbs of Kiev. Heavy fighting had taken place there between Ukrainians and Russians as Moscow’s troops tried to break the lock on the capital in the first weeks of their invasion.
At the time of the tragedy, “children and employees” of the kindergarten located near the crash site were at the scene, Kouleba said. According to images published on social networks, a huge fire broke out after the helicopter fell, a residential building was also nearby. No information on the cause of the tragedy was immediately disclosed.
Earlier, Oleksiï Kouleba had said that “the circumstances” of this accident were “under development”. The aircraft that crashed belonged to the State Emergency Service, which depends on the Ministry of the Interior, according to a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force. One of the last major accidents of this type in recent years in Ukraine dates back to September 2020 when 26 people died in the crash of an Antonov-26 near Kharkiv (northeast).
This new tragedy comes in the middle of the war with Russia, four days after a deadly strike in Dnipro, in eastern Ukraine. A Russian missile devastated a residential building on Saturday, killing at least 45 people including six children, one of the deadliest bombings since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022.
The youngest victim “was 11 months old”, lamented Tuesday evening the deputy head of the Cabinet of the Ukrainian presidency, Kyrylo Timoshenko, after more than three days of research. Under the rubble, the rescue workers had extracted injured people, but also lifeless bodies, trapped under huge sections of concrete.
This new strike on a civilian target has caused great emotion among the Ukrainian population, while the country has been fighting against the Russian invasion for nearly 11 months, often in very difficult conditions.
Emotionally, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vowed to bring to justice “each person guilty of this war crime”, pointing directly to the Russian army as responsible for this carnage. Moscow, for its part, has firmly denied any involvement in this bloody strike, as in previous episodes.
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Sylvie Claire / July 21, 2024
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky spoke on the phone on Friday, with the former US president claiming to have promised the Ukrainian president to “end the war” between Ukraine and Russia should he return to the White House. “As your next president of the United States, I will bring peace to the world and end the war that has cost so many lives,” said the Republican presidential candidate.
Donald Trump frequently claims that he would be able to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine very quickly on his return to power, but never provides details of how he would achieve this. Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the phone call, during which he congratulated the billionaire on his official nomination the previous day as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate.
Donald Trump’s frequent praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as his criticism of other Nato countries, is causing concern among Ukraine’s Western allies. In February, he threatened that, if he returned to the White House, he would no longer guarantee the protection of Atlantic Alliance countries against Russia if they did not pay their share, even claiming that he would “encourage” Moscow to attack them. The former American president also used his power over the Republicans to block a $61 billion military aid package for Kiev for months in Congress, which was finally adopted at the end of April.
In his posting on X on Friday, Volodymyr Zelensky said he had “agreed with President Trump to discuss, in a face-to-face meeting, the steps to be taken towards a just and lasting peace” in Ukraine.
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Former Ukrainian far-right MP murdered in Lviv: “All leads are being investigated, including Russia”
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Steph Deschamps / July 21, 2024
In a message on Telegram, the Ukrainian National Police said she had succumbed to her injuries in hospital after being the target of an assassination attempt.
“I always say that no place is safe in Ukraine,” lamented Lviv mayor Andriï Sadovy, denouncing a ‘heinous murder’ and offering his condolences to the victim’s relatives.
According to the Ukrainian Prosecutor’s Office, the attack took place on Friday evening, at around 7.30pm, when an unidentified individual fired at Irina Farion, seriously wounding her in the head. “All surveillance cameras are being checked, witnesses are being interviewed and several districts (of Lviv) are being examined. All leads are being investigated, including the one leading to Russia”, reacted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on X on Saturday.
Interior Minister Igor Klimenko told a briefing in Lviv on Friday evening that the suspected killer could have been lurking around Irina Farion’s home for several days.
According to him, investigators are currently focusing on the possibility of a murder motivated by a “personal grudge” linked to the victim’s activities, but are not ruling out a “commissioned assassination” either.
The 60-year-old language teacher and linguist was a member of parliament for the nationalist Svoboda party between 2012 and 2014.
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Sylvie Claire / July 18, 2024
At least six people died in a shopping mall fire on Wednesday in Zigong, southwest China, and thirty others were rescued, China’s state broadcaster CCTV said. “Rescue teams are continuing their search,” the media outlet added.
Images broadcast by the channel and others shared on social networks show thick black smoke rising from a building overlooking a shopping street in this city 1,600 kilometers from the capital Beijing, in the southwestern province of Sichuan.
The fire broke out in the early evening in a shopping mall at the foot of a 14-storey building, CCTV reported.
“At 8:20 pm, the fire was extinguished and 17 people were rescued. Others are still trapped, and rescue operations are continuing”, said the station in an initial report on the situation.
Fires and other fatal accidents are frequent in China, due to the sometimes lax application of safety standards. In January, at least 39 people perished in a store fire in central China. According to the authorities, the fire started in the basement of a store when workers “broke the rules” during construction work. At the time, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for lessons to be learned from the disaster to prevent further tragedies. The same month, a fire in a residential building claimed at least 15 lives.
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