Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry on Feb. 22 flatly denied media reports that Ukrainian pilots are aboard planes shelling opponents of Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya.
“Ukrainians are not flying bombing missions in Libya," Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Voloshyn told the Kyiv Post, refuting an unconfirmed report published on the Internet by Stratfor, a U.S.-based intelligence firm, which on Feb. 21 cited an unnamed diplomatic source as saying Ukrainian pilots are aboard Libyan jets firing on protesters in Tripoli.
Voloshyn said Foreign Ministry officials met with the Libyan ambassador to Ukraine, on Feb. 21 to make arrangements for the evacuation of some 200 Ukrainian citizens from Libya as quickly as possible.
“There are currently about 500 Ukrainians in Libya. Most are doctors and medical personnel,” said Voloshyn. "We are making arrangements to evacuate them."
Top officials from Ukraine and Libya have in recent years discussed dozens of projects designed to increase economic cooperation between the two nations, ranging from military cooperation to oil and natural gas exploration projects.
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, who visited Tripoli in November 2010, said Ukraine was interested in selling Libya equipment for its oil and gas industry, engineering products, engines for helicopters and transport aircraft. He also said Ukraine in 2011 would meet its obligations to supply planes to Libya, which have been paid for but not delivered.
The visit of Azarov’s predecessor, Yulia Tymoshenko, who traveled to Tripoli in September 2009, is chronicled in a U.S. State Department cable published to the Internet by the whistleblower WikiLeaks site on Jan. 31.
Libyan diplomats in Kyiv refused comment about anti-Gadhafi protests in Tripoli and Benghazi. An Ukrainian spokeswoman at the embassy, who refused to identify herself and give a reason for not identifying herself, said the Libyan embassy is open for business and working normally.
"Libyan diplomats in Kyiv have nothing to say about what’s going on in Libya," the woman said.
Scores of countries in recent days have made arrangements to bring home citizens from Libyan cities hit hardest by deadly protests. Three Turkish ships were en route for Benghazi on Feb. 22 seeking to evacuate about 3,000 Turkish citizens from the Libyan cities hit hardest by deadly protests. News agencies reported Italy was also sending an air force transport aircraft to Benghazi to evacuate roughly 100 Italian citizens from there. Italy, which some 1,500 citizens living or working in the country.
The Dutch Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, said a military plane was waiting at a military airport in the southern city of Eindhoven for permission to land in Tripoli to pick up more than 100 Dutch citizens seeking to leave Libya, while Russian Emergencies Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova said in televised comments that an Il-76 plane is to take off for Tripoli on Tuesday to collect 134 Russians who are "ready for evacuation."
