A Ukrainian plane that arrived in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul to evacuate Ukrainians was hijacked by unidentified people who flew it into Iran last Sunday, media reports quoted Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Yenin as saying.
“Last Sunday, our plane was hijacked by other people. On Tuesday, the plane was practically stolen from us, it flew into Iran with an unidentified group of passengers onboard instead of airlifting Ukrainians. Our next three evacuation attempts were also not successful because our people could not get into the airport,” Yenin said.
According to him, the hijackers were armed. However, the Minister did not report anything about what happened to the plane or whether Kyiv would seek to get it back or how the Ukrainian citizens got back from Kabul, onboard of this “practically stolen” plane or another one sent by Kyiv.
Yenin only underlined that the whole diplomatic service headed by Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba “had been working in the crash test mode” the whole week.
On Sunday, a military transport plane with 83 people on board, including 31 Ukrainians, arrived from Afghanistan to Kyiv. The presidential office reported that 12 Ukrainian military personnel returned home, while foreign reporters and public figures who requested help were also evacuated. The office also added that around 100 Ukrainians are still expecting evacuating in Afghanistan.
After the US announced the end of a 20-year-long military operation in Afghanistan and started to pull out soldiers, the Taliban went on an offensive against Afghanistan government forces.
Taliban on August 15 swept into Kabul, forcing the US and other countries to evacuate their embassy staff and people from the war-torn nation.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian foreign ministry
spokesperson has denied the claim, telling the local internet television station, Hromadske, that Yenin was trying to describe the difficulties faced by Ukrainian pilots during the
evacuation of Kabul.
Ukraine has evacuated 256
citizens on three flights, the spokesperson said, adding that all aircraft being used to evacuate Ukrainian citizens from Afghanistan were currently in Ukraine.
An Iranian official also denied the hijacking claims, saying that the plane had landed in Mashhad, a city in the country’s north-east, for refuelling before continuing on to Kyiv.
FlightRadar data shows that a Ukrainian plane previously leased to the private Atghan airline Kanm Air flew from Kabul to Mashhad on Monday, not Tuesday as Yenin said.
Later on Mondayonday, the plane flew from Mashhad to Kyiv, Flightradar data showed.
PRIMACY NEWSBLOG 