Scores of African migrants in Ukraine are being blocked from fleeing to safety as Russian attacks continue to devastate the country, those trying to make border crossings have told The Independent.
Black people living in the region say they have been left to languish, with some taking to Twitter in recent days to share accounts of abandonment.
Black people are allegedly being prevented from boarding trains and buses taking people to the borders, and some are not being permitted to cross into other countries, according to sources speaking to Insider and social media reports.
Thousands of African students live in Ukraine to study medicine and other technical fields at affordable prices.
Korrine Sky, a student in Ukraine, who helped coordinate escape routes for hundreds of African students trapped in the country, told Insider that some have struggled to get on buses heading to the border.
“Some people have gone to get buses, but they’re not allowing Black people basically onto the buses. They’re prioritizing Ukrainians. That’s what they say,” Sky said.
One African student who reached the Ukraine-Poland border wrote on Twitter that Ukrainian police and army were refusing to let Africans cross.
He shared a video that showed authorities “threatening to shoot” them.
Nze (@nzekiev) February 27, 2022
“We are currently at the Ukraine-Poland border. Their Police and Army refused to let Africans cross they only allow Ukrainian. Some have slept here for 2 days under this scorching cold weather, while many have gone back to Lviv,” he wrote.
He previously said that he and other Africans had been removed from a train while trying to reach the border.
Video from the Ukraine-Polish border appears to show a large group of Black people, including a baby, waiting in the open in the nighttime cold at the border fence.
Other similar reports have emerged on Twitter.
BBC reporter Stephanie Hegarty tweeted a similar account of a Nigerian medical student saying that Ukrainian border guards stopped Black people from crossing into Poland, saying “they have to let ‘Ukrainians’ through first.”
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