Foreigners evacuated from Yemen by Russian plane thank Russia
CHKALOVSKY AIRPORT, Moscow region. April 7 (Interfax) - Citizens of different countries have been forced to urgently flee Yemen because the situation grows worse there every day, according to people who were evacuated from Yemen to Moscow onboard a Russian airplane, which landed at an airfield in the Moscow region on Monday evening.
"We contacted the Foreign Ministries of Germany and France and they and the Russian Embassy agreed that a Russian airplane would pick us up. We got registered with the Russian Embassy, which consequently got in touch with us and asked us to come to the airport. We are boarding a Frankfurt-bound flight in Moscow next morning," German citizen Banda Azelvi, who was evacuated from Yemen together with his wife and children, has said.
Most passengers thanked the Russian authorities and praised the work of the Russian Consulate in Yemen.
"We are grateful to Russia and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin for taking us out of this country. Russia was the only country that offer us this assistance," Uzbek citizen Nurlus Salamov, who has been working as a doctor in Yemen for the past seven years, said.
Citizens of Ukraine, which does not have its embassy in Yemen, have to flee Yemen with Russia's help as well, Irina Aldakhri, a woman from Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, said.
"Just six months ago, I brought my mother to Sanaa. I did not know that a war would start there so soon. I sent my mother on a previous flight. She is waiting for us in Moscow and then we will all go to Ukraine," she said.
A Russian airplane evacuating 150 people from war-torn Yemen landed at the Chkalovsky airfield outside of Moscow late on April 6, completing the fifth such mission in the past few days. Its passengers include citizens of Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, France, Yemen, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Iraq. Among them are five children under the age of two and 29 children aged from three to 14.