26 August 2021, Thursday, 14:12 273

Ukraine Finances Evacuation Of Citizens From Afghanistan By 1 Of 3 Planes – Foreign Ministry

Editor: Daria Zubkova

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The evacuation of Ukrainian citizens, their families and foreigners from Afghanistan was carried out at the expense of the state budget of Ukraine by only one of the three aircraft.

Foreign Affairs Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, announced this at a briefing, answering a question from Ukrainian News Agency.

“We took out two civilian planes and one military. The military plane is financed from the state budget, but this is not in the budget of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so I have nothing to tell here, it’s worth contacting the Ministry of Defense. The Ukrainian state pays nothing for the flights of civilian aircraft, this evacuation took place at the level of political agreements between Ukraine and the owners of these aircraft. We did not pay the budget money for these flights, this, in fact, is the art of diplomacy," he said.

With the three planes, Ukraine evacuated more than 250 Ukrainian citizens and their family members.

Asked whether the citizens of Ukraine were evacuated from Afghanistan by Russian planes, Kuleba replied that so far there has been no such information.

“The fact that these planes flew not to the Kabul airport, which is controlled by the coalition forces, but to the Bagram airport, which is controlled by the Taliban, testifies to two things: first, the close connection between the Russian Federation and the Taliban movement, and secondly, the possibility of Ukrainian citizens on these evacuation planes is very low," he said.

According to him, now Ukraine is organizing the next evacuation flight, which is to pick up about 90 more Ukrainians and their families.

In addition, Ukraine also receives requests from foreign states and international organizations to take out their citizens or citizens of Afghanistan who cooperated with them.

Kuleba assured that the priority will be given to the citizens of Ukraine.

At the same time, he noted that the situation at the Kabul airport is becoming more complicated, and some countries are already starting to refuse evacuation flights, since they cannot guarantee the safety of citizens.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, Kuleba confirms that there was a threatening situation with regard to one of the planes that evacuated Ukrainian citizens from Afghanistan, but denies that it was hijacked and kidnapped.