Irish citizens in Ukraine have been advised to shelter in a secure place following Russia’s invasion of the country.
Russian forces have crossed Ukraine’s borders and are bombing military targets near big cities.
Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs has warned its citizens against moving around the country in the coming hours.
Irish national broadcaster RTÉ reports there are 64 Irish citizens in Ukraine, down from 145 a week ago.
It says most are understood to have families and are settled in the country.
UK nationals were advised two weeks ago to leave Ukraine while commercial flights were still available. Those remaining have again been urged to leave Ukraine immediately – if they judge it is safe to do so.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that martial law was now being imposed across all of Ukraine following the invasion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted he does not plan to occupy Ukraine, but Ukraine has branded it a “full-scale invasion”.
The Northern Ireland Assembly buildings were lit up blue on Thursday night as an act to show “solidarity” with Ukrainians.
A Ukrainian student at Queen’s University Belfast, who is currently in her home country, told BBC News NI that she and her friends are frightened – but defiant.
Valerie Kravtsova, a business management student, said: “You are terrified, but you have to keep calm and we must continue to live in order to support those people who we love and who protect us every day,” she said.
“We don’t want to die, no-one wants that but if that’s what it takes to secure that territory, to secure the well-being of the most important people to us, we will do so, we will do what it takes.”
‘Run for our lives’
Nadia Dobrianska, an Irish language speaker who was studying for a master’s degree at Queen’s before returning to Ukraine where she is a human rights activist, told Radio Ulster’s Evening Extra she had fled her home.
“My parents are ill so I had to take care of them,” she said.
“My mother is close to a psychotic state, she’s not thinking straight and I spent hours convincing her to leave, so I’ve evacuated now from Kyiv.
“I packed my things and rushed to my parents, thank God I was renting a house close to them.”
She said she got her brother and broke the news of the invasion to him and together they convinced her parents who were in a “state of denial” that they had to leave.
She told her mother that no-one had anywhere to go, “we just have to go and take any food that we’ve got and just run for our lives”.
Another Queen’s student, Elizaveta Zagarina from Siberia, who studies at Queen’s Management School, said she has been trying to keep up with the news from Russian sources.
