SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Ukrainians living in the Kurdistan Region protest outside the U.N. headquarters in Erbil against Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Dozens of people gathered outside the United Nations office in Erbil on Saturday to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
A number of people from the Kurdistan Region also joined to express their support for the Ukrainians.
“No Putin. No war,” said a poster. “NATO close sky. Save Ukraine,” said another poster.
A Kurdish citizen who holds the Ukrainian residency told Esta Media Network that he joined the protest to show his support for Ukrainians.
“We call on the United Nations to throw water on the fire, and on Russia to stop the war on Ukraine and Kyiv, and stop hurting the beautiful nation,” he said.
There are around 100 Ukrainians living in Kurdistan Region, according to the reporter.
After weeks of warnings from Western leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin unleashed a three-pronged invasion of Ukraine from the north, east and south on Thursday, in an attack that threatened to upend Europe’s post-Cold War order.
Putin has cited the need to “denazify” Ukraine’s leadership as one of his main reasons for invasion, accusing it of genocide against Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine. Kyiv and its Western allies dismiss the accusations as baseless propaganda.
Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence at the fall of the Soviet Union and Kyiv hopes to join NATO and the EU – aspirations that infuriate Moscow.
Putin says Ukraine, a democratic nation of 44 million people, is an illegitimate state carved out of Russia, a view Ukrainians see as aimed at erasing their more than thousand-year history.
At least 198 Ukrainians, including three children, have been killed as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s health minister.
The minister said another 1,115 people, including 33 children, had been wounded in the Russian invasion.
