Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba will oppose the introduction of a ban on foreigners’ entry and the idea of urging Ukrainians to return home en masse despite the increasing spread of COVID-19 in Ukraine and around the world.
"Personally I, if this issue appears on the agenda, will oppose the introduction of a ban on the entry of foreigners and oppose the idea of urging Ukrainians to return home en masse," Kuleba said at an online briefing on Tuesday, October 13, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.
He noted that the Foreign Ministry jointly with other government agencies had assisted Ukrainians in returning home at the beginning of the pandemic and that was an "unprecedented large-scale operation."
"But a new reality has already come. All those, who wanted to return, have returned. Those, who decided to stay where they were, have stayed. So now it is important not to generate new migration flows as every movement is running a risk," the diplomat said.
As the foreign minister noted, the topic of COVID-19 is raised during all international negotiations, and the opinion of their participants is completely unanimous: although COVID-19 rate remained the same, but it is now impossible for the governments to act as they acted at the beginning of the pandemic.
"There were a lot of unknown things then, a lot of questions, the society was ready for severe restrictions. Now we do not see such readiness, now we need to think about the consequences of the economic downturn," the diplomat explained.
As reported, Ukraine has registered 5,133 new coronavirus cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases to 270,587.