Reporter's notebook

As Israel works to get citizens out, El Al flight from Kyiv mostly empty

Airlines have added extra flights from Ukraine, but the demand doesn’t seem to be there

Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter

Passengers board El Al's flight from Kyiv to Tel Aviv, February 16, 2022 (Lazar Berman/Times of Israel)
Passengers board El Al's flight from Kyiv to Tel Aviv, February 16, 2022 (Lazar Berman/Times of Israel)

KYIV — As Israeli diplomats continue working to convince Israelis to leave Ukraine, their efforts are being met with mixed success.

Israeli airlines added flights from Kyiv to Tel Aviv, making a total of 32 scheduled to take off this week, and Israel’s envoy to Ukraine Michael Brodsky said on Tuesday that the flights are nearly full.

But things looked quite different on El Al Flight 2652, which took off from Kyiv Wednesday evening with well over half its seats empty, despite El Al canceling its flight scheduled for the next morning and moving those passengers to this one.

Alena, who was traveling alone, was in Kyiv visiting family when she saw on the news that Israel was asking its citizens to leave the country. Relatives in Israel were also concerned.

“They were calling me from Israel all the time saying ‘Come back, come back,'” she said.

But she did not think fighting would actually break out with Russia.

El Al’s mostly empty flight from Kyiv to Tel Aviv, February 16, 2022 (Lazar Berman/Times of Israel)

“I thought it was too much to say there would be a war,” she said.

Among the few Israeli passengers visiting Ukraine as tourists were a young religious couple from the settlement of Yitzhar in the northern West Bank.

Like many Israeli visitors to Ukraine, they had been in Uman for a few days, visiting the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. They had planned on flying back Thursday, but were forced to shorten their stay because of the flight cancellation.

They didn’t think much about the possibility of war.

“I don’t know; we went with the flow,” said Yaakov.

Though some members of the Israeli community in Uman did leave, most are staying put, he said. The couple said they chose to visit the pilgrimage site now because women traditionally do not visit on Rosh Hashanah, when tens of thousands of Jews travel to Uman.

Ultra-Orthodox men seen lighting the ‘Havdallah’ candle marking the end of the Jewish Sabbath, inside a synagogue in the town of Uman, Ukraine, during the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. September 7, 2013. (Yaakov Naumi/Flash90)

Other passengers included elderly dual citizens who didn’t speak a word of Hebrew and several families with young children who were chatting away happily in Russian. Those who wanted to sleep during the flight could stretch out in their own rows.

On Tuesday,  Brodsky said that around ten thousand Israeli citizens remained in the country, and 6,500 had registered for emergency updates through the embassy. Consular staff at the embassy, which includes diplomats who flew in on Monday to reinforce the team, have been working hard to help citizens get the documents they need to leave Ukraine this week.

Judging by Wednesday’s flight, thousands of Israelis in Ukraine are choosing not to follow the embassy’s advice.

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