Ukrainian Peacekeepers Die in Sierra Leone

A UN peacekeeping force M-8 helicopter crashed near Freetown, capital of Sierra Leone, killing the crew, officers of the 20th special helicopter squadron of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and three officials of the local UN mission. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s press service informed Interfax Ukraine that the helicopter crashed around 11:50 p.m. local time on November 7 (two hours difference with Kyiv time). The UN mission’s statement says the helicopter was on a scheduled Hastings-Freetown-Lungi-Freetown-Hastings flight with a total length of 50 kilometers. It took off from Hastings at 22:56 local time. At 23:50 the aircraft commander was to raise the UN mission’s flight coordination center. He did not, and twenty minutes later a search-and-rescue helicopter took off and eventually spotted fragments of the missing vehicle on the water. Immediately another helicopter and four vessels were directed to the site.

The course of search and rescue operations the bodies of the aircraft commander, Colonel Volodymyr Savchuk, navigator Captain Serhiy Pylypovych, and one UN mission official were found. The other crew members, among them flight interpreter Captain Serhiy Aiushev and flight engineer Senior Lieutenant Andriy Kulykov, are still missing. Search and rescue continues and a special commission of inquiry was appointed to investigate the MI-8 crash.

At present, 644 Ukrainian peacekeepers and observers are deployed in Sierra Leone, including 110 officers and men of the Twentieth Special Helicopter Squadron, constituting one of Ukraine’s largest peacekeeping contingents. A month ago on October 8, another MI-8 was shot down by Georgian-Chechen guerrillas in the Kodori Canyon of Abkhazia. Five UN military observers, a woman interpreter, and the three members of the Ukrainian crew died. Since 1992, almost 900 officers, and men have served on Ukrainian peacekeeping forces, some thirty have been killed, and over fifty wounded.