“Last Sunday, our plane was hijacked by other people. On Tuesday, the plane was practically stolen from us, it flew into Iran with an unidentified group of passengers onboard instead of airlifting Ukrainians. Our next three evacuation attempts were also not successful because our people could not get into the airport,” the minister was quoted as saying by the Russian Tass news agency.

Yevgeny Yenin said that the hijackers were armed.

There has been no confirmation of the incident from the US or NATO officials who are controlling the Hamid Karzai International Airport since the Taliban tookover Kabul last week.

The Ukrainian deputy minister did not report anything about what happened to the plane or whether Kiev would seek to get it back or how the Ukrainian citizens got back from Kabul, onboard of this “practically stolen” plane or another one sent by Kiev.

“The whole diplomatic service headed by Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba had been working in the crash test mode the whole week,” the minister added.

However, the Iranian aviation authorities rejected the media reports about the plane hijacking.