Ministers: Get out while you still can
THOUSANDS of Britons are being urged to board the last flights out of Ukraine amid fears Vladimir Putin will order Russian forces to invade ‘within days’.
Hundreds of families flew back to British airports yesterday after the Government’s travel advice warned that Russia had amassed the firepower to attack its neighbour ‘at no notice’.
The prospect of an invasion has prompted fears in Whitehall of another mass exodus of Britons from a warzone, similar to the airlift from Kabul last summer after the capture of Afghanistan by the Taliban.
But Ministers have warned British citizens in Ukraine there will be no RAF flights to evacuate them and that they must fly on commercial jets or travel overland to a neighbouring country to find a safe air route home.
Last night, a British couple revealed they are unable to fly back with their new surrogate-born baby because embassy staff have not provided them with emergency papers. Ben Garratt, 40, and his wife, Alice,
from Queen’s Park, North West London, said: ‘We’re stuck in Ukraine until we can get the paperwork.’
Other Britons who managed to leave the capital Kiev yesterday were Paul Meakin, 51, from Poole in Dorset, who landed at Gatwick with his Ukrainian-British wife Svetlana, 36, and their daughter after attending a funeral.
The IT company chief claimed Ukrainians were not unduly worried, adding: ‘You wouldn’t even know. They don’t care, that’s what came across.’