More than 1,000 Jewish pilgrims blocked from Ukraine over coronavirus fears
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Border guards in helmets and body armor policed a row of barricades blocking them from coming into the country. Ukraine has been closed to foreigners since August.
The pilgrims have been given food and water, the Ukrainian border service said.
Avraham Shapira, an Israeli pilgrim who is at the border with his children, told CNN that he’d booked a direct flight from Tel Aviv to Kiev four weeks ago, because he heard the border would be closed.
When he got to the airport, he said, the flight was canceled and he booked new tickets to Kiev via London. In London, his next flight was canceled too, but he was able to book a ticket to Belarus.
He praised the Belarus government for providing “all the services” needed by the pilgrims crossing the border, saying the Belarusians have offered to provide buses to bring the pilgrims directly to Uman, stay two days and return to Belarus.
Shapira added the group would not “see any citizen of Ukraine. It’s not a danger for anybody. I come to pray for the world, I don’t come to pray only for me.”
“Our country is ready to take responsibility on all these functions and, of course, organize the process as safely as possible, for instance it will not affect the situation with the Covid disease rate,” said President Alexander Lukashenko’s press secretary Natalia Eismont said in a statement.
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