Six Filipinos safely reached the Moldovan border after evacuating Ukraine as tensions with Russia continued to escalate in the past days, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) confirmed.
The DFA said that the evacuees included a fourth-year medical student at the Bukovinian State Medical University in Western Ukraine, two workers of an international organization, and two Filipinos married to Ukrainians, one of whom traveled with her two-year-old child.
Four of them will travel to Romania and get on a repatriation flight to Manila.
The Philippine honorary consulate in Moldova and the Philippine embassy in Hungary coordinated to ensure the Filipinos’ safety and arranged to repatriate the four Filipinos to Manila.
There are about 300 Filipinos living in Ukraine, according to the DFA, many of whom were undecided about leaving the country in hopes that the conflict would fizzle out.
However, fierce fighting continued across Ukraine, resulting in 352 civilian casualties.
The embassy and the consulate advised Filipinos near the borders of Moldova and Romania to contact the Philippine embassy in Budapest and the consulate in Moldova for assistance in safely returning to the Philippines.
