Fourteen dead, including a child, and a direction of the Ministry of the Interior decimated: the results of the helicopter crash which occurred this Wednesday, January 18 in Brovary, in the suburbs of kyiv, left in shock a Ukraine yet accustomed for a year to tragedies. “indescribable pain” commented Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, confirming the death of Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, his First Deputy Minister Yevhen Yenin and State Secretary Yuriy Lubkovich, as well as the entire crew of the Super Puma, which was then flying towards the Kharkiv region.
A key ministry
The small town of Brovary had already been the scene of a violent battle last March, when the Russian army had tried to encircle the Ukrainian capital. And if the Ukrainian investigators have not yet ruled out a crash due to a “enemy action”, the circumstances of the tragedy remain unclear. But the death of three high-ranking officials, including the minister of one of the country’s most important institutions, has caused trouble.
Could the death of Denys Monastyrsky be a blow to the Ukrainian war effort? A gargantuan institution of some 150,000 men and women, the Ministry of the Interior is directly involved in the fight against the Russian army: its police officers man the checkpoints in the regions close to the front line and sometimes participate directly in the combat operations, while first responders from the emergency service are the first on the scene after the Russian strikes. The National Guard is directly engaged on the front line: the famous Azov regiment is thus part of this institution under the control of the Ministry of the Interior.
No questioning of command
However, “this tragedy should not directly affect their action”, esteem with The cross Oleksiï Melnyk, specialist in security issues at the Ukrainian think tank Center Razoumkov. “The main function of the Ministry of the Interior is to coordinate the action of four agencies – the National Police, the Border Guard Service, the National Guard and the Emergency Situations Service – which have their own chain of command, the department does not control them directly. » Their relative autonomy should thus allow them to continue during the inevitable ” transition period “juge Oleksii Melnyk.
Elected deputy of the Ukrainian Parliament in 2019 within the party of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Denys Monastyrsky had only taken the head of the Ministry of the Interior in July 2021. He replaced Arsen Avakov, juggernaut of Ukrainian politics who held this ministry with an iron fist since 2014, a longevity record in post-Maidan Ukraine. The man had been weakened in 2020 by a rape case in a kyiv region police station, but seemed so irremovable that his resignation in the summer of 2021 took everyone by surprise.
Denys Monastyrsky was a devotee of Volodymyr Zelensky. “Today, I do not yet know who will be able to replace him, political scientist Volodymyr Fessenko told Ukrainian radio NV, but given the circumstances I do not exclude that it will be someone with combat experience. » The head of the national police, Igor Klimenko, will take over.