Monitoring Desk: Both Ukraine and Iran denied claims by Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister that a Ukrainian plane had been hijacked, reports Jerusalem Post.
Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry denied the report as well, saying “There are no captured Ukrainian planes in Kabul or elsewhere. The information about the ‘captured plane’ that is being circulated by some media outlets is not true,” according to the RBC Ukraine news agency.
The confusion started by a statement of Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister Yevhenii Yenin to the Ukrainian Hromadske Radio on Tuesday in which he stated that last Sunday, plane was hijacked by other people. On Tuesday, the plane was practically stolen from us, it flew into Iran with an unidentified group of passengers onboard instead of airlifting Ukrainians.
“Our next three evacuation attempts were also not successful because our people could not get into the airport,” said Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister Yevhenii Yenin to the Ukrainian Hromadske Radio on Tuesday.
The Iranian Civil Aviation Authority denied the report, saying that the plane refueled in Mashhad and then flew to Kyiv.