Turkey has begun evacuating its embassy staff in Kyiv as Russian troops edged closer to the Ukrainian capital, an official told AFP on Friday.
The advance of Russian forces continued Friday against the capital Kyiv, which risks being entirely surrounded.
“We are evacuating embassy staff for security reasons,” the official, who wished to remain anonymous, told AFP.
The Turkish embassy will be relocated to Chernivtsi near the Romanian border.Turkey was one of the last countries — along with Poland — which remained in Kyiv despite the deteriorating situation on ground.
Nearly 20,000 people had already been evacuated between Wednesday and Thursday from the Kyiv region, according to Ukrainian authorities. Kyiv’s Mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said Thursday that half the city’s population had fled and the capital “has been transformed into a fortress”.
“Every street, every building, every checkpoint has been fortified.”
The UN announced on Friday that more than 2.5 million people have already fled the war-wrung zone in Ukraine, while over two million others have been internally displaced since the launch of the Russian invasion.
Amid growing fears of nuclear Armageddon, and a climacteric phase of global economic droughts, French President Emmanuel Macron had told reporters on Friday, following an EU leaders’ meeting at Versailles Palace, Paris, that “Europe and also Africa will be very deeply destabilised as regards food because of what can’t be planted right now in Ukraine”.