Arab Students Stranded in Ukraine Desperate to Go Home

Arab Students Stranded in Ukraine Desperate to Go Home

Thousands of young Arabs who took up studies in Ukraine are appealing to be rescued from a new nightmare -- Russia's full scale invasion of the country.

More than 10,000 Arab students attend university in Ukraine.

Many have criticized their governments for failing to take concrete measures to repatriate them, and sought refuge in basements or the metro system. Few dared to cross the border into neighboring Poland or Romania in search of sanctuary.

"We left Iraq to escape war... but it's the same thing in Ukraine (now)," Ali Mohammed, an Iraqi student told AFP by telephone from the western city of Chernivtsi.

Mohammed said he has been calling the Iraqi embassy in Kyiv around a dozen times a day since Russia launched the invasion but no one has picked up.

"We are demanding to go home. We are waiting to be rescued," he said. According to an Iraqi government official, there are 5,500 Iraqis in Ukraine, 450 of them students.

Syrian Raed Al-Moudaress, 24, echoed him.

"I arrived in Odessa only six months ago, hoping to open a new page far away from war," he told AFP by telephone.

"I am lost. I don't know what to do," he said, adding he is spending most of his