Kyiv brings home 65 Ukrainians stranded for weeks at Russian–Georgian border
Ukraine has repatriated 65 of its citizens who had been held at the Dariali checkpoint on the Russian–Georgian border, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha and Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.
The group included 10 women and eight people with serious illnesses. All of them, Sybiha noted, had been kept at the checkpoint “in what were essentially the conditions of a humanitarian crisis created by Russia’s actions.” Their return was carried out on the orders of President Volodymyr Zelensky, with the assistance of the governments of Georgia and Moldova, through whose territory they were evacuated.
Sybiha said the Foreign Ministry had previously brought back 44 people from Dariali in recent months, bringing the total number repatriated to 109.
He said the crisis on the Russian–Georgian border began in the second half of June, when Russia sharply increased the number of Ukrainians it deported. “The Ukrainian side has already made a public appeal to the Russian Federation to send [deported Ukrainians] directly to Ukraine’s border rather than to Georgia,” he said. “That proposal still stands.”
