The Czech Foreign Ministry will send a monitoring team to western Ukraine
to assess the situation of close to a hundred expatriates who have
requested to be repatriated to their old homeland. The Czech cabinet this
week agreed to comply with their request saying the authorities would
proceed as fast as possible in arranging residence permits. The team, led
by Karel Kühnl, the Czech Foreign Ministry’s special commissioner for
Czechs living abroad, is to map the expats’ living circumstances, the
security situation and their immediate needs which would enable the
authorities to provide targeted assistance and give them a better idea of
how many Czech expats might request to be repatriated. There are currently
around 20,000 Czechs living in Ukraine.