Hundreds of Ukrainian refugees are camping out in Mexico City and waiting for the US government to allow them into the country. About 500 evacuees were waiting on Tuesday in large tents under a searing sun on a dusty field on the east side of Mexico’s sprawling capital. The camp has been open only a week and from 50 to 100 people are arriving every day. Some refugees have already been to the US border in Tijuana where they were told they would no longer be admitted. Others arrived at airports in Mexico City or Cancun. The US government announced in late March that it would accept up to 1,00,000 Ukrainian refugees. Hundreds entered Mexico daily as tourists in Mexico City or Cancun and flew to Tijuana to wait for a few days to be admitted to the US at a San Diego border crossing on humanitarian parole.
Giorgi Mikaberidze, 19, arrived in Tijuana on April 25 and found the US border closed. He went from being just yards from the United States to some 600 miles (966 kilometers) away in the Mexico City area. He said he travelled to Mexico alone. ‘It’s very difficult to wait. We don’t know how the programme will work,’ he said. Meanwhile, the European Union’s leader on Wednesday called on the 27-nation bloc to ban oil imports from Russia in a sixth package of sanctions targeting Moscow for its war in Ukraine. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also proposed that Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, and two other major banks be disconnected from the SWIFT international banking payment system.
Von der Leyen, addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, called on the EU’s member nations to phase out imports of crude oil within six months and refined products by the end of the year. We will make sure that we phase out Russian oil in an orderly fashion, in a way that allows us and our partners to secure alternative supply routes and minimizes the impact on global markets, von der Leyen said. The proposals need to be unanimously approved to take effect and are likely to be the subject of fierce debate. Von der Leyen conceded that getting all 27 member countries some of them landlocked and highly dependent on Russia for energy supplies to agree on oil sanctions will not be easy.