Passengers arriving in the UK on one of the first flights from Kyiv since the call for Britons to immediately leave Ukraine have described growing alarm in the country.
The Foreign Office on Friday warned British nationals to leave Ukraine immediately while commercial flights are still available and the land border with Poland remains open. The number of British nationals in Ukraine is believed to be in the low thousands.
Haider Ali, a student at the Dnipro Medical Institute in central Ukraine, was among those arriving at Gatwick shortly after midday on Saturday. Ali, from Birmingham, told the PA news agency that he had been unsure about leaving the country.
“I’d been in two minds about coming back because of the advice coming out by the British embassy, about the amber alert, red alert,” he said. “A lot of people, a lot of students were waiting for the red alert, and it happened yesterday.
“Once that happened, everybody booked their tickets and left as soon as possible,” Ali said. He said his one-way flight ticket cost £210, adding that he thought prices would jump in coming days as people flee the country.
The 21-year-old said his university, where around half of the students are British, had advised students to “get out as soon as you can”.
The US on Friday warned of the “very distinct possibility” of a Russian invasion of Ukraine in the next few days and told all remaining Americans to leave the country in the next 48 hours.
James Heappey, the UK armed forces minister, said that there are no plans for an emergency airlift by western air forces from Kyiv, unlike in Afghanistan last summer. “The Royal Air Force will not be in a position to go in and to fly people out,” he said on Saturday.
Ali said public opinion in Ukraine remained divided over the likelihood of a Russian invasion, but that the view that the western media were exaggerating the severity of the crisis was changing. He said: “The Ukrainians are generally very laissez-faire as in terms of people, but the last couple of days they’ve started to get worried.
“And when that happens, alarm bells should be ringing.”
The divergent perspectives on the situation were exemplified in the views expressed by two passengers on the flight from the capital. Ukrainian Pasha Honcharuk, 24, from Kyiv, said he was “not too worried” and was just travelling for work. He said: “All news channels tell that there will be war but I don’t think so.”
In contrast, a Ukrainian business analyst, who did not want to be named, said “of course everybody’s worried” about the possibility of an invasion. However, she said the threat had not been behind her decision to move to London for work.
Amid calls for Britons to leave Ukraine immediately, the former British ambassador to the US Kim Darroch described the challenge remaining embassy staff would have to undertake to help Britons leave the country, saying it would “overwhelm the embassy’s resources”.
“With lots of foreign nationals trying to get out, there will be chaos, there may need to be extra flights laid on so this will occupy everyone’s time for 24 hours a day for the next few days and you won’t get everyone out – some people will choose to stay,” Lord Darroch said.
