MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Foreign Affairs said Saturday that many Filipinos in Ukraine are still unsure if they will head back to the Philippines as they hope the conflict with Russia will fizzle out in the coming days.
“We have a lot of countrymen who are vacillating on whether to stay or to go because they are hoping that the situation in Ukraine will improve,” Sarah Lou Arriola, DFA undersecretary for migrant workers’ affairs, told ABS-CBN’s Teleradyo partly in Filipino.
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Arriola said this is the case for some of the more than 40 Filipinos they have evacuated out of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv into the western city of Lviv.
She added that the DFA has only managed to account for 181 of the more than 300 Filipinos living in Ukraine as they suspect that others do not want to contact the embassy out of the fear that they will be forced to go back to Manila.
“For us, we need to know who they are and where they are in Ukraine so if ever they need help we can easily get to them,” she said. “We’re not forcing you to go home, but we hope that you can reach out to us.”
Arriola said other Filipinos who do not want to go home are married to Ukrainians and have children with them, while others are household workers who opt to stick with their employers.
Alert Level 2 remains
Despite the escalating crisis between Russia and Ukraine, the Philippines is still keeping Alert Level 2 over the eastern European country, which only instructs Filipinos there to restrict non-essential movements, avoid public places and prepare for evacuation.
Arriola said only Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. has the power to escalate the alert level, which will only happen if there is “full-scale armed conflict.”
But even with this, the DFA is encouraging Filipinos to go home, where even their Ukrainian spouses and children can be welcomed.
“We are encouraging them to go home if they have the opportunity to do so because we do not know what’s going to happen in the next few days,” Arriola said.
Fighting in Kyiv
Fighting has begun in Kyiv just hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia will attempt to take the capital before dawn.
"Heavy fighting continues," the State Special Communications Service of Ukraine posted on its Telegram account around 11:30 a.m. Philippine time.
Earlier Saturday, Ukraine's military said Russia had "attacked one of the military units on Victory Avenue in Kyiv" but that the assault was "repulsed".
It also reported another incident northwest of the capital.
Civilians prepared to face off with the heavily armed Russian forces have collected assault rifles and were urged by the Ukrainian defense ministry "to make Molotov cocktails and neutralize the enemy".
Russian leader Vladimir Putin unleashed a full-scale invasion on Thursday that has killed dozens of people, forced more than 50,000 to flee Ukraine in just 48 hours and sparked fears of a new Cold War in Europe. — Xave Gregorio with a report from AFP