Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister Yevgeny Yenin claimed on Tuesday that an evacuation flight with an unknown number of passengers was hijacked from Afghanistan on Sunday and taken to Iran. Surprisingly hours later, the claims have been denied by both Ukraine and Iran.
Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister Yevgeny Yenin had informed Russian news agency Tass that the plane was hijacked by “armed people”. He said that the plane was stolen from Ukraine and “flew into Iran with an unidentified group of passengers onboard”. However, he did not divulge more information about what happened to the flight.
“Last Sunday, our 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,” Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister reportedly quoted.
Later, the authorities in Iran denied that any hijacked plane landed in the country. Ukraine too officially rejected Yenin’s claim that the plane was hijacked.
“Apparently it happened yesterday at 22:00 local/1730Z, the aircraft landed in Mashhad for “Refueling” and immediately embarked for Kyiv afterward… We deny the Ukrainian claims,” Iranian Civil Aviation Organization Spokesperson Mohammad Hassan Zibakhsh told ILNA agency.
Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko denied the hijack in Kabul. He told the Interfax agency that Yenin “was explaining in general the unprecedented level of difficulties that diplomats have had to face in order to evacuate Ukrainians.”
Ukraine has so far organised three evacuation flights from Kabul. They took place on August 15, 21 and 23, carrying both Ukrainians and Afghans including Sahraa Karimi, one of Afghanistan’s most prominent women filmmakers.
Many countries have launched evacuation missions to take out their citizens from Afghanistan since the Taliban seized power on August 15. The swift evacuation is being carried out with the help of the forces of the United States that are in control of Hamid Karzai International (HKI) airport in Kabul.
One possible conspiracy could be the Iranian Government did not want to send their own flight to war-torn Afghanistan so instead stole the Ukrainian flight to get their own people back home, while the Ukrainian people were left stranded in the Afghanistan airport. The World’s eyes are on Afghanistan as yet another bizarre twist of events occurred and became viral news. The mystery of the hijacked flight remains unexplained as authorities of both countries denied the claims later.