Live: Ukraine says interior minister among 16 killed in helicopter crash near Kyiv

Issued on: 18/01/2023 – 09:00

9:25am: Interior minister among 16 dead in helicopter crash near Kyiv

Sixteen people including Ukraine’s interior minister and other senior ministry officials were killed in the helicopter crash outside Kyiv, the national police chief has said.

Two children were among the dead and several more casualties were in hospital, officials said.

8:48am: Helicopter crashes near nursery close to Kyiv

A helicopter has crashed near a nursery and a residential building in the town of Brovary outside the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, the local governor has said, adding that there are casualties.

“At the time of the tragedy, children and staff of the institution were in the kindergarten. Everyone has now been evacuated,” Kyiv region governor Oleksiy Kuleba wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

8:30am: ‘Dnipro deaths have strengthened Ukraine’s determination to secure more weapons’

Rescuers have ended the search for victims of the Russian missile strike on an apartment building that killed at least 45 people in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, with 20 people still missing and funerals being held in the grief-stricken community.

The grim tally comes as Ukraine has moved a step closer to winning approval for German-made modern battle tanks to confront invading Russian forces and has secured a pledge of more Patriot defence missiles from the West.

FRANCE 24’s Gulliver Cragg reports from the capital Kyiv.

02:53

6:35am: Patriot training will take 10 weeks, says Ukraine’s defence minister

The training of Ukrainian officers to operate the Patriot advanced long-range air defence system will last 10 weeks, Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov has said.

The United States, Germany and the Netherlands have pledged to send Patriot missile systems to Ukraine to repel a barrage of Russian missile and drone attacks.

“There is a decision that our officers will be trained in 10 weeks. Such obligations were undertaken by the American partners,” Reznikov said, in remarks published on Ukraine’s state Military Media Center Telegram messaging app.

01:43

2:22am: Russia’s newest nuclear submarine on its way to temporary base in Arctic

The Russian navy’s newest nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine Generalissimo Suvorov is on its way to a temporary base for the Northern Fleet in the Arctic, the TASS news agency reports, citing an unidentified defence source.

“Recently, the submarine cruiser Generalissimo Suvorov has started moving from Severodvinsk, where it was located at the Sevmash shipyard, to a temporary base for the Northern Fleet,” the state agency cited its source as saying.

The strategic submarine was officially included into the Russian navy at the end of 2022 by President Vladimir Putin.

1:17am: UK sees ‘moral imperative’ of Ukraine tanks as US teases new aid

Britain said Tuesday that its breakthrough decision to provide tanks to Ukraine to fight Russia was a “moral imperative” as the United States said that more military aid was coming.

Foreign Secretary James Cleverly on a visit to Washington said that Britain was sending a signal to Russia’s Vladimir Putin by backing the Ukrainians and becoming the first nation to agree to their request for Western tanks.

“What Putin should understand is we are going to have the strategic endurance to stick with them until the job is done. And the best thing that he can do to preserve the lives of his own troops is to recognize that we’re going to stick with Ukrainians until they are victorious,” he said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Read more: UK offers tanks in Ukraine’s hour of need, but will Germany follow suit?

12:33am: Russia’s commissioner denies talks on large prisoner exchange with Ukraine

Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova has said she did not talk to her Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Lubinets in Turkey last week about a possible prisoner exchange.

“In my negotiations with Ombudsman of Ukraine Dmytro Lubinets in Ankara there was never any talk of exchanges, and I always emphasise that these issues are within the competence of the Russian Ministry of Defence,” Moskalkova said on theTelegram messaging app.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)