In the early hours of Oct. 24, police started to receive a series of strange calls from citizens in Glevakha, a town of 8,000 people in Kyiv Oblast. People were reporting that a crowd of foreigners was roaming the streets, asking for food. Police sent several patrols to Glevakha, and soon detained 28 citizens of Vietnam who had come to Ukraine illegally, reads a National Police statement published on Oct. 24.
Despite the chilly October weather, the Vietnamese people were wearing summer clothes, and were freezing and hungry.
“They all came to Ukraine in the summer,” Mykola Zhukovych, the spokesperson of Kyiv Oblast National Police told the Kyiv Post on Oct. 25.
“A local citizen was supposed to transport them into a European Union country through an illegal immigration channel at the right moment.”
However, while waiting for the right moment, the Ukrainian kept them locked up in his house for weeks, and failed to provide them with enough food.
“So one day they decided they’d had enough – they beat him up and escaped,” Zhukovych said.
All 28 Vietnamese citizens were taken to the Vasylkivskiy District National Police Department in Kyiv Oblast, where officers provided them with food and old police uniforms to warm up in, as many were dressed only in T-shirts and shorts.
The Ukrainian who had kept them in his house was detained the same day on suspicion of kidnapping.
“The citizens of Vietnam will be taken to Ukraine’s State Migration Service and sheltered in one of Ukraine’s centers for illegal immigrants,” the police press service said.
After the migration service determines how Vietnamese citizens entered Ukraine, they will be deported back to Vietnam, Serhiy Gunko, the spokesperson of the State Migration Service of Ukraine told the Kyiv Post on Oct. 25.
An employee of Kyiv Oblast National Police canteen provides food to the citizens of Vietnam, who were found roaming the streets of Glevakha town of Kyiv Oblast, asking for food. (National Police of Ukraine)
