A senior Israeli official on Wednesday told his Russian counterpart that if Russia invades Ukraine, Israel will require assistance from Moscow to evacuate its citizens, two senior Israeli officials told Axios.
According to the report, Israel is concerned as only 3,100 Israelis have evacuated Ukraine, leaving about 10,000 Israelis still in the country.
The call on Wednesday was between Israel’s Foreign Ministry Director-General Alon Ushpiz and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, and according to the report, it wasn’t the first time that the issue of evacuating Israelis from Ukraine had been raised with Bogdanov.
Israel wants Russia to commit to allowing Israel to evacuate its citizens via land to neighboring countries. Meanwhile, Israel’s Foreign Ministry opened an alternative consular office in Lviv in western Ukraine in case its staff has to evacuate the embassy in Kyiv [as the invasion would begin in eastern Ukraine, which borders Russia.]
The Foreign Ministry has also formulated a contingency plan to evacuate Israelis by land via Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova, and Romania.
Israeli Ambassador to Kyiv Michael Brodsky told Ynet on Wednesday that the possibility of a Russian invasion of Ukraine will remain a possibility until at least the end of the month.
Brodsky decried the complacency of Israelis who remained in Ukraine, saying in a Times of Israel (TOA) interview on Wednesday: “There might be a situation where no one will be able to be rescued from here, you might have to go to the west and cross the border to Poland or Romania. In this case, it means it’s already a state of emergency and the whole country will go to the west. It will be a nightmare.”
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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One Response
Good idea! Mordechai should have called Haman directly on his phone and settled all the issues and that would have been a gantze Megillah!
Who are these Jews – are they chasidim @ Uman, or are they Ukrainian Jews who went back home from Israel? If the latter: Russia does not recognize Ukraine as independent country, they probably do not recognize that Soviet Jews left their jurisdiction also.