Andreas and Maria share about the process of getting into Ukraine while being quarantined in Kyiv
Hi everybody. Andreas and Maria are here, in quarantine in Kiev. We have been asked by Biotexcom to describe a little around the process of getting in Kiev in these times, with the documentation and flights …
Yes, how we got here actually… Yes, we know a lot of you are sitting at home with the same anxiety and worries that we had a couple of days ago, panicking how to get here before our children are born. We finally got here on Monday?
Yes, on Monday.
Today is Tuesday …
No, Thursday! Sorry!
Quarantine, yeah…
Yeah.. So, we will describe how we got here. And as many of you, we were thinking about going to Minsk, taking a plane to Minsk, and trying to drive the rest of the way, but it is not an easy process. We also tried to see if we could use a private plane – expensive …
Very expensive.
Yes. What do you do? But it seemed like we were taking a big risk, with having to pay for the plane, without getting permission to come here. So we put that idea aside.
And then, last Sunday, like almost two weeks ago, friends of ours appeared on Swedish news, national news …
Talking about our problems …
Yes, the difficulties in getting Kiev in these difficult times, and just describing horrific circumstances and not being able to get down to the child’s birth …
And something extraordinary happened. Just ike 30 minutes after that segment had been shown on the news our friends that appeared on the news, they got a call from…
their lawyer? ..
from an airline …
an airline, yes.
Airlines told them that there was an anonymous sponsor that wanted to pay for our flight down to Kiev. Incrediable!
Yes!
We were … I can’t even explain how that felt then. I am sure you can imagine. But we did not know if it was possible to make it come true. So we started to get the work done, to get permissions. It’s like two things that we had to get done.
The first was that we needed permission to enter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the second was that the plane had to get permission to land.
yes, landing permission.
yes, and the part that we could be a part of was the contact with our Ministry, Swedish Ministry, to get permission from the MFA. And that is what we did.
It took us quite a few days to understand what kind of documentation we had to provide them with. But in the end, it’s a lot of papers, but it is not that difficult. It’s a statement from Biotexcom (in our case), an invitation letter stating that we have gone through surrogacy, that we’re expecting twins, date for the fertilization and so on. So this an invitation letter. After that we need an invitation letter from the place where we do our quarantine, the hotel. It is approved by the government for quarantine, so that’s where we are now. A statement from them that they are welcome, and a booking reference that we have booked a room here for two weeks. So, an invitation from Biotex, an invitation from the hotel, and the booking reference, and also we needed to sign an agreement to undergo quarantine. So, that’s the documentation that we sent to our embassy, and they sent it to the MFA. And after that, it was kind of fast handling. It took like one day. And we got the permission to enter Ukraine. It looks like this, just a piece of paper stating our names, social … No, name, date birth, and passport number, day when we suppose to enter, which border and which plane.
So, it took us a few days to understand what we needed to send, but once we got a hold of that, it was quite an easy process. It did not take a lot of time.
But we got a lot of great help from our embassy.
The other part was to get the permission to land for the airline. And that was a whole different story!
yes, that was …
that was crazy.
it was a bit messy.
yes!
to say the least.
It was like a game of cat and mouse for over a week. They thought they just needed one more approval from one more authority, but there was always a new authority, and new approval. And the days just keep going and we never got the approval …
No, I think that we had that cat and mouse game for about a week, and then we kind of gave up …
We did give up.
yes, we did give up because we did not think that this would resulting us, taking this private plane.
So we actually bought tickets for the SkyUp flight that was supposed to go from Stockholm this Tuesday, and we told the private airline that we had to give up this idea … We had to try to take up the SkyUp plane. But thank you very much for trying to help us … And it was just like one hour after that …
yes, one hour after we gave up our private plane…
they called us and said: “You have to get here now, we’ve gotten the permission, we can fly today.” So we just jumped in a taxi and drove to the airport…
yeah, to the airport.
And we took off! We have no idea what was needed to be done to get that permission. We were not a part of that process. We are sorry, but we cannot help you with any information about that. I don’t know if I would recommend this way to get here. It was horrific to go back and forth with hope and devastation for a week. Every day we thought that we’d go, no, we wouldn’t, then we thought we would go, no, we wouldn’t, back and forth. But we got here! And that’s the most important…
yes, that’s the main part.
And so now we are here, in quarantine, day three. And to be honest, it’s like spa for our brains. We’ve been so tired, it’s been such a hard fight trying to find a way to get here, with a lot of stress, anxiety, searching for information, contacts, our brains are really tired.
yes, the thing is that, I mean we have a lot of going on in our minds.
yes, as you do.
as you do!
And getting this corona pandemic in the mix… It’s not really …
It’s not human!
It’s not human … It’s not really… And how do you say … It’s not helping the situation.
no, it’s not helping!
So…
But we hope that we can somehow help you with understanding the process that we got through, what we needed to provide our embassy with. And once we had provided them with the documents, it was quite an easy process to obtain permission from the MFA to enter the country. However, that does not help if you have no way to get here. But we have seen that there are more flights this week, both from SkyUp and from Ukrainian international airlines. We hope that you will get the support you need from your embassy that’s necessary to obtain the permission and we hope that you will be able to fly here with the commercial airlines.
Yeah, I think that we should maybe inform about …
Yeah! One problem was that you can only get permission to enter Ukraine from the MFA for one day, one trip, which made it difficult for us, when our trip was postponed all the time. So, we had to every day get a new application.
See, you cannot have two applications at the same time. You have to apply one time and then you have to apply again.
yes, if the trip changes.
Yeah, if the trip changes.
So we had to do this application to the MFA a lot of times during this week of waiting. But I think they were fairly good with that.
Yes, we got them pretty fast when we needed a new date, when the flight was postponed every day. So I think that’s not the hard part. You will manage that. As soon as you have the invitation letter from your clinic, an invitation letter and booking reference from where you are going to stay during quarantine, and you sign the agreement to do quarantine, that is what you need. From our experience, that was kind of an easy process.
yes.
If you get help from your embassy. And the quarantine, it’s a different situation. To be locked up… As many of you know, in Sweden we did get this kind of restrictions, we have been able to move outside during this whole corona situation.
yes.
But two weeks it’s nothing. I can sit here. I’m in Kiev. Our babies, we are expecting twins, they are not born yet and, hopefully, we will get through this quarantine before the babies are born. The hotel is great, they are trying their best to make our stay as good as it can be …
as positive as possible.
The food is different from at home. So that’s a bit of a challenge, but it could be worse. We are here, that is the most important thing.
yes.
we have a balcony, so we can go outside. It is a lovely garden outside. We have nothing to complain about. We are so happy to be here. And we that hope this video might help you get your encouragement up and see that it’s possible. We could get here, you can get here. We keep our fingers crossed for you.
Together: bye.
