More than 10,000 Arab students took up studies in Ukraine, attracted to the former Soviet republic by a low cost of living and, for many, the lure of relative safety compared with their own troubled homelands. Many have criticised their governments for failing to take concrete measures to repatriate them, and wanted refuge in basements or the metro system. Few dared to cross the border into neighbouring Poland or Romania in search of a shelter.
Iraqi students, for example, have been calling the Iraqi embassy in Kyiv around a dozen times a day since Russia launched the invasion but no one has picked up. According to an Iraqi government official, there are 5,500 Iraqis in Ukraine, 450 of them students.
Among Arab countries, Morocco has the largest number of students in Ukraine, with around 8,000 enrolled in universities, followed by Egypt with more than 3,000.
Hundreds of students from Lebanon, gripped by a financial crisis the World Bank says is one of the world's worst in modern times, are also trapped in the country. Before the invasion, 1,300 Lebanese students were studying in the country. Half managed to flee by their own means, but the rest are stuck in Ukrainian university cities. Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said the government was drawing up plans to help nationals trapped in Ukraine. Planes will be sent to neighbouring Poland and Romania at a "date to be announced later", he said.
Other countries like Egypt have also pledged to organise repatriation flights from neighbouring countries. Egyptian students took matters into their own hands and crossed the border into Poland, hoping to make it back home.
But for Tunisia which does not have an embassy in Ukraine, getting in touch with its 1,700 citizens there is complicated. Authorities said they had been in contact with international organisations such as the Red Cross to organise departures.
Oil-rich Algeria, which has strong military links with Russia, did not ask its 1,000 nationals in Ukraine to leave. Algerian authorities have, however, urged them to stay indoors and only venture out "in case of an emergency".