Nine Indonesian Citizens Trapped In Chernihiv Successfully Evacuated To Poland, Foreign Minister Retno: Alhamdulillah

Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs Retno Marsudi (Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

JAKARTA - Foreign Minister Retno confirmed that nine Indonesian citizens trapped in Chernihiv, Ukraine, were successfully evacuated to Poland on Friday.

"Alhamdulillah, after going through very hard and long efforts, we managed to evacuate nine Indonesian citizens from Chernihiv," said Foreign Minister Retno in a virtual press statement Friday evening, March 18.

He said the whole process was very hard, quite long and not very easy. For 22 days efforts to evacuate Chernihiv continued.

"Today, they were successfully evacuated via Kyiv, Lviv and then crossed into Poland. The total journey was 15 hours from Chernihiv to Lviv, and there were long queues at the Ukraine-Poland border," said Foreign Minister Retno.

"Currently they are still in the car on the way with the Director of Indonesian Citizen Protection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Upon arrival in Warsaw, they will undergo a health check, before returning to Indonesia on March 20 using a commercial plane," concluded Foreign Minister Retno.

With today's evacuation, a total of 133 Indonesian citizens in Ukraine were successfully evacuated. Meanwhile, 23 others chose to stay because they were married to Ukrainian citizens and the other nine were essential staff of the Indonesian Embassy in Kyiv currently operating from Lviv.