My moving encounter with hero who died
UKRAINE can ill afford to lose people of the calibre of interior minister Denys Monastyrsky.
He was a prominent figure in the ‘Zelensky generation’ of young reformers who found themselves leading their country in a savage, existential war.
I will not forget a deeply moving encounter with him one week after the Russian invasion. The streets of Kyiv were deserted, the air raid sirens wailed, enemy tanks had reached the suburbs. It felt that the end of an independent Ukraine was only days away.
Inside the 1,000-year-old cathedral of St Sophia, the leaders of Ukraine’s religious faiths – Christian, Muslim and Jewish – had gathered to pray for a miracle of deliverance. Also present that fraught morning was Mr Monastyrsky, who had been a lawyer by training.
He had come to church accompanied by a bodyguard who was in uniform and armed with an assault rifle. The minister was wearing a bullet-proof vest over his civilian clothes.
Their appearance and solemn demeanour underscored the reality of the situation: that death could come at any moment. After the collective prayers were over, Bishop Vitalii Kvyvytskyi, head of the Roman Catholic diocese of Kyiv-Zhytomyr, stepped forward and, as I wrote then, ‘placed his right hand flat on the chest of Mr Monastyrsky’s body armour. Eyes closed, the prelate began to pray for him, in the manner of the benediction of a medieval warrior before battle’.
I approached the interior minister – he had only been in the job for seven months – as he was about to leave the cathedral. ‘You are facing a grave threat,’
I observed. ‘We are ready,’ he replied in English. We shook hands and I wished him luck. Then he strode back out into the besieged city and his enormous responsibilities.
This was not to be a coda. In the 11 months that have passed since then Ukraine’s resilience has amazed the world.
It is sad Mr Monastyrsky, 42, the most senior of the Zelensky generation to die in this conflict, is not part of her future.