Zelenskyy was due to hold Staff meeting with Interior Ministry leadership on day of helicopter crash

On the day the helicopter crashed at a kindergarten in Brovary, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had been due to hold a meeting of the Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, which Denys Monastyrskyi, the Minister of Internal Affairs who died in the plane crash, had planned to join from Poltava. 

Source: Oleksii Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine (NSDC), on TV on 19 January

Quote: "Now the investigation is underway, and all the circumstances of this terrible disaster are being clarified, I can say that the president of the country was supposed to convene the Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief yesterday at 10:00. We usually never make this public. 

The Minister of Internal Affairs was due to join this meeting from Poltava at 10:00. I received the last text message from him at 08:07, and literally a few minutes later, this terrible catastrophe happened." 

Details: Danilov did not answer the question as to whether Russia could have been involved in the crash of the State Emergency Service’s helicopter while the leadership of the Interior Ministry was on board.

"We will definitely find out all the circumstances," he promised.

The NSDC Secretary asked people not to speculate about what happened and why until the final conclusions have been drawn.

"We will definitely get an answer about what happened over Brovary yesterday morning and why," Danilov stated.

More on this story: Tragedy in Brovary. What is known about helicopter crash with top leadership of Ministry of Internal Affairs on board 

Background: 

• On the morning of 18 January, a helicopter crashed near a kindergarten in Brovary in Kyiv Oblast, causing a fire to break out. At 15:45, emergency workers reported that emergency services had completed search-and-rescue operations at the site of the helicopter crash in Brovary.
• The helicopter crash killed the top leadership of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs: Denys Monastyrskyi, Minister of Internal Affairs, Yevhen Yenin, First Deputy Interior Minister, and Yurii Lubkovych, three of the Interior Minister's aides and security guards. The data on the number of dead has differed. According to information confirmed as of 15:00, 14 dead had been found at the site of the helicopter crash, including one child.
• Kyrylo Tymoshenko, Deputy Head of the President’s Office, said that the helicopter crash in Brovary occurred during a flight by Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi to one of Ukraine’s hotspots where fighting is ongoing.
• The Security Service has launched an investigation into the causes of the helicopter crash in Brovary; the main avenues of investigation are violation of flight safety rules, technical malfunction and intentional actions. 
• The Cabinet of Ministers appointed Ihor Klymenko, the Head of the National Police, as the Acting Interior Minister at an extraordinary meeting on 18 January.

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