War in Ukraine: who was Denys Monastyrsky, the interior minister who died in the helicopter crash

While not an immediately recognizable figure, Denys Monastyrsky, the Ukrainian interior minister who died in a helicopter crash while en route to the front on Wednesday, was a key official in Volodymyr Zelensky’s government.

In addition to being in charge of the police, the National Guard and border control, he was also a member of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, the body in charge formulate wartime goals.

Monastyrsky, 42, is the the highest-ranking Ukrainian official to die since the start of the Russian invasion in February 2022. He had joined Zelensky’s government in July 2021, just seven months before Russia invaded Ukraine. When war broke out, he was one of the key officials who stayed with the Ukrainian president in Kiev.

Monastyrsky was a lawyer and had been elected to the Ukrainian parliament in 2019 for Zelensky’s party, Servant of the people. He was nominated by the president with the goal of eradicating corruption and reforming the remaining Soviet remnants into security organizations.

The war forced him to change his focus, and he was forced to hire purely military tasksas well as the vast majority of Zelensky government officials.

Among its various functions, since the start of the invasion, the Interior Ministry has been tasked with overseeing the rescue efforts of Ukrainian cities affected by Russian attacks.

One of his most sensational interventions came a few days ago, when the ministry launched a frantic effort to try to find survivors in a residential complex attacked by Russia that killed 45 people.

“He was a person very modest, very brave”said Serhiy Leshchenko, adviser to Zelensky’s chief of staff, in statements gleaned from The New York Times.

“There were no scandals around him. He was a good guy,” she concluded.