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Arab students stranded in Ukraine desperate to go home
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TUNIS, 28 February 2022, (TON): Thousands of young Arabs who took up studies in Ukraine, often fleeing violence back home, are appealing to be rescued from a new nightmare Russia’s full scale invasion of the country.
More than 10,000 Arab students attend university in Ukraine, drawn to the former Soviet republic by a low cost of living and, for many, the lure of relative safety compared with their own troubled homelands.
Many have criticised their governments for failing to take concrete measures to repatriate them, and sought refuge in basements or the metro system.
Few dared to cross the border into neighbouring Poland or Romania in search of sanctuary.
Ali Mohammed, an Iraqi student told AFP by telephone from the western city of Chernivtsi “we left Iraq to escape war but it’s the same thing in Ukraine.”
Mohammed said “he has been calling the Iraqi embassy in Kyiv around a dozen times a day since Russia launched the invasion but no one has picked up.”
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