An­na-Lisa Paul

Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs, Dr Amery Browne, has con­firmed that a T&T na­tion­al liv­ing in the Ukraine is cur­rent­ly trapped there as Rus­sia con­tin­ues to press with its in­va­sion of that coun­try.

The na­tion­al had re­mained un­doc­u­ment­ed as he had not been reg­is­tered with this coun­try’s mis­sion in Brus­sels.

Re­veal­ing that the man is mar­ried to a Ukrain­ian woman and both had been liv­ing and work­ing in Kyiv for the past 11 years, Browne yes­ter­day as­sured he has been in con­tact with the man, as well as his par­ents who still live in T&T.

The Min­is­ter said, “I have been in con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion with both the fam­i­ly and our na­tion­al in Kyiv.”

In­di­cat­ing that the man was cur­rent­ly “in good spir­its,” Browne added, “He has a con­firmed route out of Ukraine via ground trans­port on Mon­day, and he is go­ing to Ger­many.”

Ground trans­port is be­ing used in this in­stance as all air trans­port in­to and out of Ukraine is cur­rent­ly sus­pend­ed, due to the on­go­ing mil­i­tary con­flict with Rus­sia. (See page 4)

Browne said he had a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with the man yes­ter­day.

“I was able to im­press up­on him that in my view, it would be bet­ter to ac­cel­er­ate that ex­it plan and he’s agreed to do so.”

As a re­sult, the min­istry’s diplo­mat­ic team in Brus­sels and some of its in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners are now act­ing to, “iden­ti­fy a faster route of ex­it from Kyiv and from Ukraine for this na­tion­al and his wife.”

Un­able to say ex­act­ly how this could be ac­com­plished, Browne said there were some promis­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for them to leave be­fore Mon­day.

He said the man’s apart­ment build­ing had a bomb shel­ter they were util­is­ing from time to time. How­ev­er, he said the sit­u­a­tion is a grave and dan­ger­ous one.

(More on Page 6)