Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has assured Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Greece’s “full support” for his government in a telephone call on Monday.
The Prime Minister’s office said in a statement that the conversation focused on how to deal with the adverse effects in Ukraine due to the Russian invasion.
Mitsotakis told Zelenskyy that “Greece would send aid and receive Ukrainian refugees as well as from the Greek diaspora.”
On the topic of the Greek diaspora, Mitsotakis noted the need to open a humanitarian corridor for the safe exit of civilians from cities such as Mariupol.
The Greek Prime Minister also told Zelenskyy he wanted to ensure the Greek Consul General and others trapped in the OSCE building in Mariupol could move freely.
Dramatic appeal for help by ethnic Greeks in Mariupol:
This telephone call comes as the President of the Federation of Greek Associations in Ukraine, Alexandra Protsenko, made a dramatic appeal the international community to mobilise to prevent the imminent extermination of Ukraine’s Greek communities.
READ MORE: ‘People are scared’: Ukraine’s Greek communities in agony as war rages on.
According to Keep Talking Greek, Protsenko sent a letter to CNN Greece, from an underground shelter in Mariupol, which denounced the “genocide of the Ukrainian people and the Greeks of Ukraine by the Russian Federation.”
The President then called on the international community to organise a “green corridor” for the evacuation of Greeks “from settlements surrounded by the enemy,” as well as “the provision of humanitarian aid.”
More than 2,500 residents have already been killed in the port city of Mariupol since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said on Monday.
READ MORE: Thousands attend anti-war protest in Athens as Ukraine braces for all-out Russian attack.
After several days of failed attempts to deliver supplies to Mariupol and provide safe passage out for trapped civilians, ABC News has reported that a convoy of over 160 cars left the city on Monday.
This appears to be the first successful attempt to arrange a “humanitarian corridor” to evacuate civilians from the encircled Ukrainian city.
READ MORE: ‘Terrified of the war’: Expatriates, refugees reach Greece after escaping Ukraine.
Source: Ekathimerini and ABC News.
