Portugal has joined the list of countries advising nationals in the Ukraine to exit the country due to tensions continuing to build along the frontiers with Russia.
After a week in which the likelihood of an Russian ‘invasion’ has yo-yoed this way and that, today is being seen as ‘a bad day’, with talks between Russia and the US and other NATO allies reported to have ‘not gone well’.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky maintains the West’s warnings of an imminent Russian attack are simply causing panic. He is essentially saying the equivalent of ‘where is the intelligence that backs them up?’.
For now, Portugal’s advice to citizens is not to travel to the Ukraine unless the journey is “strictly essential” and to ‘ponder leaving the country temporarily”.
Journeys to the Donbass region (in the southeast of Ukraine) and other areas close to Russia and Belarus are being particularly ‘recommended against’.
There are believed to be about 240 Portuguese citizens currently living in the Ukraine. The Portuguese embassy in Kiev is said to be in permanent contact with them.
