Ukraine retracts plane hijacking allegation

After earlier saying that its evacuation plane had been hijacked in Afghanistan and flown to Iran, Ukraine has now retracted its allegation. 

Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry denied media reports, 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.

Earlier, Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Yevgeny Yenin had said that a Ukrainian plane that arrived in Afghanistan for the evacuation of stranded Ukrainians has been hijacked.

The foreign ministry spokesperson clarified that Yenin was speaking about unprecedented level of difficulties being faced by diplomats to evacuate Ukrainians in Afghanistan. 

"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," Yenin was quoted as saying by the Russian Tass news agency.

Yevgeny Yenin had said that the hijackers were armed.

There has been no confirmation of the incident from the US or NATO officials who are controlling the Hamid Karzai International Airport since the Taliban tookover Kabul last week.

The Ukrainian deputy minister did not report anything about what happened to the plane or whether Kiev would seek to get it back or how the Ukrainian citizens got back from Kabul, onboard of this "practically stolen" plane or another one sent by Kiev.

“The whole diplomatic service headed by Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba had been working in the crash test mode the whole week,” the minister added.

However, the Iranian aviation authorities rejected the media reports about the plane hijacking.