230 Pakistanis return home from war-hit Ukraine

Around 230 Pakistanis were repatriated from Ukraine on Wednesday through a special flight of the Pakistan International Airline (PIA) that arrived in Islamabad at 12:07 am.

The Pakistan Embassy in Ukraine said on Friday that 1,463 Pakistanis have been safely evacuated from the war-hit country.

In a tweet, the embassy said that eight citizens were at the Ukraine-Hungary border waiting for the evacuation whereas approximately 30 Pakistanis were in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Sumy and Kherson.

Earlier in another tweet, the embassy had said that it had evacuated 98 per cent of Pakistanis that were living in Ukraine. "Now only those few (around 30) Pakistanis are left in Ukraine who are stuck in areas of intense fight[ing]," it added.

On February 27, two aircraft of the national flag carrier flew to Poland to evacuate the Pakistanis stranded because of the ongoing war in Ukraine, a spokesperson for the PIA had said on Saturday.

Read Inside the journey to escape Ukraine

“The Pakistani embassy in Ukraine is not only contacting all those Pakistanis who want to return to the country but also providing them all-out information in this regard,” Spokesperson Abdullah Hafeez said. “The PIA management is also in contact with the Foreign Office and officials of the Pakistani embassy.”

Over 3,500 Pakistani students are enrolled in different medical and engineering universities in the former Soviet state. However, hundreds had already left Ukraine either due to semester breaks or sensing the looming war.

"We were only two Pakistanis at the hostel, while a majority were Indians. They kept us in the loop as their embassy was constantly trying to evacuate them," Hassan, a second-year student at Kyiv Medical University said thanking his Indian classmates for not abandoning him at testing time.

Recalling his two-day frightening journey from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv to the Hungary border he said he was not sure if he would manage to reach the border due to the ferocity of the war.