Ukraine crisis: Biden warns Putin of ‘severe costs’ of invasion in phone call

Passengers arrived at Gatwick Airport, south of London, on a direct flight from the Ukrainian capital shortly after noon on Saturday, just hours after the Foreign Office warned UK nationals in the country, thought to number in the low thousands, to “leave now while commercial means are still available”.

Those returning suggested there were mixed signals about the level of concern in the country about the threat of war.

Haider Ali spoke to the PA news agency after landing at Gatwick Airport from Kyiv on Saturday.

He said: “I’d been in two minds about coming back because of the advice coming out by the British Embassy, about the amber alert, red alert. A lot of people, a lot of students were waiting for the red alert, and it happened yesterday.

“Once that happened, everybody booked their tickets and left as soon as possible.”

The 21-year-old from Birmingham said his university, the Dnipro Medical Institute in Dnipro, a city in central Ukraine, had advised students to “get out as soon as you can”.

He said around half the students at the university are British.

The UK and other Nato countries have urged their citizens to leave as fears grow that Russian president Vladimir Putin could order an invasion in the coming days.

Ali said: “I think the main thing that people were getting worried about as well is, because it’s along the Dnieper River, a lot of the people were saying, if Putin wants to suffocate Kyiv, push his warships along that path as well.”

The student said he had paid 210 for his one-way flight ticket and thought prices would get much more expensive over the next three days as more people rush out of the country. He said he was hoping to return to Ukraine by June to continue his studies.

Ali said Ukrainians’ opinions were split on the likelihood of a Russian incursion, but that the perception that Western media were blowing the crisis out of proportion was changing.

He said: “The Ukrainians are generally very laissez-faire as in terms of people, but the last couple of days they’ve started to get worried. And when that happens, alarm bells should be ringing.”