Both Ukraine and Iran denied on Tuesday reports that a Ukrainian plane that was evacuating Ukrainians from Afghanistan on Sunday was hijacked by armed hijackers and flown to Iran instead.
"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," said Ukraine's deputy foreign minister Yevhenii Yenin to the Ukrainian Hromadske Radio on Tuesday.
The Iranian Civil Aviation Authority denied the report, saying that the plane refueled in Mashhad and then flew to Kiev.
Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry denied the report as well, saying "There are no captured Ukrainian planes in Kabul or elsewhere. The information about the 'captured plane' that is being circulated by some media outlets is not true," according to the RBC Ukraine news agency.
Nikolenko clarified that Yenin was only generally explaining the unprecedented level of of difficulties that diplomats had to face in evacuating Ukrainians. It is unclear why Yenin said that plane was hijacked by armed persons and "actually stolen" if this was not the case.
According to the report, the deputy minister did not state what happened to the plane or whether Kiev would seek to get the plane back.
Last year, a Ukraine International Airlines flight was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) shortly after taking off from Tehran, killing all the passengers and crew.