Pakistani students stuck in Ukraine seeks Government’s help to rescue them

Over 500 Pakistani students are stranded in various Ukrainian cities, including Kharkiv and Kyiv. Pakistani students stuck in Ukraine are sending messages home pleading with the government in Islamabad to rescue them.

"Out of 3,000 Pakistani students in Ukraine, the majority have been evacuated," Pakistan's Ambassador to Ukraine Noel Israel Khokhar said. "Only 500 are still left in various places, and we are doing our best to transfer them to safe locations."

On February 26, he tweeted that Pakistan's embassy in Ukraine was taking "war-like" measures to evacuate Pakistani students to safer locations, but students sending SOS calls home claim that the embassy did nothing more than arrange for a bus to drop about 50 students about 30 kilometres from Poland's Ukrainian border.

The students accused the embassy for failing to evacuate them in a timely manner via video messages posted on social media.

Pakistan's ambassador to Poland, Malik Muhammad Farooq, claimed that Ukrainian border officials are refusing to let persons of other nationalities cross into Poland because their first goal is to assist Ukrainian nationals fleeing the country.

According to media sources, the Polish government has granted Pakistani students a 15-day stay – in designated locations exclusively, with no freedom to roam – to plan their subsequent travel to Pakistan, while Pakistan International Airlines has also arranged to fly the students out of Poland.