The Egyptian embassy announced last Sunday a second flight to take off and repatriate Egyptian nationals from Ukraine.
The flight took off from Henri Coandă International Airport, in the capital Bucharest, at 1 am on Monday for Cairo.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February, Egypt has expatriated approximately hundreds of citizens who crossed from Ukraine to Romania, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia as per the Kyiv embassy directives and advice to foreign visitors in the country.
Details behind the retrieval of Egyptian citizens
Egyptian nationals had to be present at the airport at 10 pm in order to depart successfully, and the embassy tagged the location of the airport nationals were to travel to on Google Maps.
Nationals have to register their names in order to depart smoothly, the embassy stressed the importance of doing so.
Egyptian passengers are not required to present a COVID-19 vaccination certificate or a negative COVID-19 test result.
Is Egypt struggling to get all their citizens out of Ukraine?
According to the Head of the Egyptian community in Ukraine, Ali Farouk, the majority is Egyptians who were in Ukraine prior to the invasion have been evacuated to neighbouring European countries such as Romania, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia, but the evacuation is still ongoing.
Yet it remains, according to Farouk, “almost impossible” to determine the exact number of Egyptians who left Ukraine as many had not informed the embassy beforehand.
This can also indicate that it also remains difficult to determine how many Egyptians remain in the country.
Prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, approximately 6,000 Egyptians resided in the country, 3,000 of which were university students.
Last week, Egypt repatriated 177 nationals from Poland, 175 students from Romania, and on 4 March announced further plans to retrieve 30 expats from Hungary.
Separately, Egyptian citizens married to non-Egyptian women will be allowed to bring their spouses with them to Egypt once submitting marriage certificates and relevant travel documents to the embassy, according to the embassy.
This decision was something the British government only elected to do recently, after initially barring British nationals to bring their Ukrainian partners with them.
What do you think of the evacuation?
