Returning Ukrainians outraged by mandatory 14-day quarantine

Midway through their evacuation from Indonesia on March 29-30, about 350 Ukrainians got an unpleasant surprise: They found out that, upon arrival, they would be forced to undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine in special hotels, where doctors would look for signs of the novel coronavirus.

They were outraged. 

The evacuees thought that they would only have to self-quarantine at home because that was the policy when they boarded the plane. But on the night of March 29, the Ukrainian government decided that a policy of self-isolation was not effective. Now, every Ukrainian has to go through mandatory observation upon return from abroad.

A few hours before the government’s decision, other Ukrainian evacuees from Vietnam had refused the forced quarantine. Videos circulating online show them breaking the doors of the airport terminal and fleeing. It was a scandal.

With the government’s decree in place, the evacuees from Indonesia were to become the first group of returning Ukrainians to be placed under mandatory observation for signs of the coronavirus, which has infected 759,300 and killed 36,400 in a global pandemic as of March 30.

But things didn’t go smoothly. The evacuees protested, refusing to sign official agreements that were a requirement to exit the plane. Eventually, some ran away or paid fines to be released home.

Still, most were placed in hotels under observation. Each will take the test for the coronavirus. If it gives a negative result, the individual will be released home to self-isolate, according to one of the evacuees.

The compliance agreement

The evacuees from Indonesia first got on a connecting flight from Indonesia to Doha on March 29. Once there, they boarded two Ukrainian planes to Kyiv and were told to sign a compliance agreement that would commit them to the quarantine regime in one of two hotels in Kyiv – one free and one for €338 per room for 14 days.

“The government practically extorted us, saying that if we don’t sign the papers they will get us off the plane, and we will stay in Doha,” says Khrystyna Krestinova, 31, who evacuated from Bali, Indonesia with her husband and two children.

Krestinova paid some $5,900 for the evacuation of her family. She had to borrow money. All of the evacuees had to buy a ticket from Doha to Kyiv for $280. To get to Doha, Krestinova and some others had to pay an additional $1,200 per person for a connecting flight by Qatar Airways. Others could exchange their canceled return tickets on Qatar Airways for free.

Most people on the two planes would not sign the agreement for about three hours. The captain of Krestinova’s plane then said that the plane could not stay much longer in the airport and would leave without them. So everybody simply signed as “Acknowledged.”

The agreement also banned them from talking to the media. But some of the evacuees immediately started posting about it on social media to draw journalists’ attention.

The ‘scary’ arrival

Upon arrival to Ukraine in the early hours of March 30, the people in the two planes were met by police and National Guard soldiers who were there to escort them to the buses standing outside the airport. The buses would then take them to the hotels for quarantine.

Everything looked scary, Krestinova says, and they were not sure where the buses would take them. Another passenger, Rada Radmilevich, says there was no one from the authorities to explain what was happening. So the passengers would not leave the plane.

“They don’t answer the questions about where they’re going to take us, they just ‘smoke’ us out of the plane. There are no responsible people and representatives of the authorities. (Just) one epidemiologist with a trembling voice from the Ministry of Health,” Radmilevich wrote on Facebook.

Finally, after the plane crew left and switched off the water and air supply, people started to come out. Krestinova says they came out after about two and a half hours and boarded the bus.

“We were simply tired of fighting, talking to everyone. We realized it was useless,” Krestinova says. 

Over 100 people stayed in the planes for many hours more. By around noon, there were about 30 evacuees left in the plane. Eventually, they boarded the buses, but still did not agree to undergo quarantine in the hotels.

The hotels

Most of the evacuees were taken to the hotel called Kozatsky in central Kyiv, where they are supposed to stay for free. 

According to Radmilevich, the evacuees agreed with Infrastructure Minister Vladyslav Kryklii to take a reliable PCR test for coronavirus on April 1. If it shows a negative result, they will be released home to self-isolate.

Still, there were others who fled or refused the observation and paid a fine.

Many of the evacuees complained that the rooms in the Kozatsky hotel are dirty and that the tap water there is yellow because of the rust in the pipes.

Krestinova says that the hotel is “okay,” except that the rooms are cold, especially after returning from the hot climate of Indonesia. They don’t have much warm clothing, and the room’s air conditioning unit is of no help in heating the room, she says.

Another problem is that they will have to buy food: either from the hotel menu, where meals start at Hr 400 ($14), or order restaurant food delivery.

Krestinova says that Hr 400 per person is a lot for her family. They are from Odesa and have no friends or family to bring them food or warm clothes in Kyiv. There are others like them from Odesa, Dnipro, Kharkiv and other cities, she says, and many don’t have anyone to help them in Kyiv either.

The alternative was the nicer Pushcha Congress Hotel, where rooms for the evacuees cost €338 per two-bed room for 14 days of observation. The price does not include food.

The theatrics

Since Ukraine suspended all passenger flights and bus and train traffic on March 28, a few thousand Ukrainians have returned home via special flights and trains from Russia, Vietnam, Thailand, the United States and other countries. Thousands more returned through land border checkpoints on foot or by car from neighboring countries, like Poland.

Another 80,000 have returned on planes, trains and buses since March 13, according to the government. They were screened for symptoms of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and asked to self-isolate at home. Some were tested with the rapid test kits. Only those with symptoms or positive tests were put under mandatory observation. 

That is why the evacuees from Indonesia feel that it’s unfair that they are the first ones to be forced into quarantine in hotels.

“How many out of 100,000 people (who came back) previously went under observation? They were traveling from the dangerous pandemic points. When was this observation then?” Radmilevich says.

Krestinova says that putting the evacuees from Indonesia under quarantine seems like a show to her, a way to demonstrate the government’s efficacy in implementing new policies.

“Watching all this is like a theater show,” she says. “I have never seen such a thing in my life.”