The foreign ministry says it will continue working to help Taiwanese nationals stranded in Russia by the COVID-19 pandemic to get home.
On Thursday, foreign ministry spokesperson Joanne Ou said that the government had earlier considered organizing a charter flight to repatriate Taiwanese citizens in Russia. However, Ou said that this idea was dropped due to the costs involved, the small number of people needing to return to Taiwan quickly, and the number of citizens who said they’d prefer to wait in Russia until the pandemic eases and ticket prices fall.
Arranging commercial air travel back to Taiwan for those needing to return quickly has also proved a challenge.
Some airlines have stopped flights to Russia amid the pandemic. The need for connecting flights has also been a problem: a number of destinations still served from Russia don’t provide onward service to Taiwan. Meanwhile, a number of countries that might be used as stopover points have banned foreign nationals from using their airports for layovers.