ISLAMABAD
Pakistan embassy in Ukraine said on Sunday a majority of 3,000 Pakistani students had left the country and the remaining 500 to 600 are being evacuated.
“There were about 3,000 Pakistani students in Ukraine,” Pakistan’s ambassador Noel Israel Khokhar said in an audio message posted on the embassy’s Twitter account. “Bulk of them have been evacuated. Only 500-600 students are left. And they are also in the process of being evacuated.”
The embassy announced in a statement that Pakistanis had been evacuated from Ternopil and Lviv to Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. It added that the country’s diplomatic missions in the region were trying to coordinate with each other.
“The government of Ukraine is dysfunctional, yet the embassy is making all out efforts to facilitate evacuation of Pakistanis from Ukraine,” the statement added.
“There are immense difficulties at border crossing points due to the huge number [of people] wanting to leave Ukraine,” the embassy said in a Twitter post.
According to the figures provided by the embassy, 4,000 Pakistani nationals, mostly married to Ukrainians, have already left the country. The embassy said a night curfew had been imposed since the beginning of the conflict in different Ukrainian cities, including Kharkiv, Lviv and Ternopil.
It added that Ternopil’s district administration had issued a warning and advised people to keep their lights off and remain in safe places. “Now, there is no safe place in Ukraine,” the embassy added. “And even cities like Lviv and Ternopil which are in the west of Ukraine have been hit.”
A large number of Pakistani nationals were stranded in the Eastern European state after Russian forces started pounding Ukrainian cities with artillery and cruise missiles on Thursday. According to Moscow-based Interfax news agency, Russian troops have captured the southeastern city of Melitopol.
