Turkiye announces evacuation plan for Turks from Ukraine via land borders

By Handan Kazanci

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkish deputy foreign minister on Friday announced the evacuation plan for Turkish nationals in Ukraine via land borders.

“We have started our evacuation operations by land from Ukraine,” Yavuz Selim Kiran wrote on Twitter.

Turkiye is “in close cooperation with the countries of the region to facilitate the passage of our citizens,” who will either leave through the ministry’s evacuation operations or by their own means via the border gates.

Kiran also detailed the practices that Turkish nationals who will leave Ukraine will be subject to when they pass through the land border gates.

Earlier, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that the evacuation process of Turkish nationals in Ukraine is underway.

"We can no longer evacuate [our citizens] by air because the airspace is closed, we cannot evacuate by the sea too, so we started evacuation through the land by buses," Cavusoglu said.

He added that nearly 5,000 Turkish citizens have already returned to the country following warnings the Turkish Foreign Ministry has made since Feb. 12, and they have reached nearly 16,000 citizens in Ukraine by phone.

Russia's military intervention in Ukraine entered its third day on Saturday, with the latest reports indicating that Russian troops were heading toward the capital Kyiv from several directions.

Putin ordered the military intervention Thursday, days after recognizing two separatist-held enclaves in eastern Ukraine.

He claimed that Moscow had no plan to occupy the neighboring country, but wanted to "demilitarize" and "denazify" Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of trying to install a puppet government and said Ukrainians will defend their country against Russian aggression.