The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) is now being urged to prepare humanitarian flights in case the situation in Ukraine escalates further.
Senatorial candidate and Sorsogon Governor “Chiz” Escudero said the DFA should be ready in case there is a need to bring back Filipinos home.
“As other countries are calling on their citizens to leave Ukraine, I urge our DFA, if they have not done so, to do the same,” Escudero said in a statement.
“We should also be ready to provide free humanitarian flights for our OFWs and repatriate them back to our country safely,” he added.
The returning senator said that the DFA should also monitor the situation in Belarus and Moldova which could also be affected in case of a Russian invasion.
DFA Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public and Cultural Diplomacy Gonar Musor said that the Philippine Embassy in Poland is now in touch with the Filipino community in Ukraine.
The DFA said that most of the Filipinos in Ukraine are living in the capital and not on the country’s eastern borders.
The UAE, Kuwait, Iraq, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, and the Netherlands advised their nationals against traveling to Ukraine.
On Twitter, the UAE Embassy in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv advised its national to postpone any travel to Ukraine.
Russia has denied any plans to invade Ukraine.
However, 100,000 Russian soldiers are currently deployed on Ukraine’s borders. Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Russia had ignored formal requests to explain the build-up of troops.
Image by Oleg Mityukhin from Pixabay
