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Simon Meechan

Clive Myrie's emotional plea as BBC correspondent reaches safety after leaving Kyiv and Ukraine

BBC foreign correspondent Clive Myrie posted an emotional plea to welcome refugees as he left Ukraine.

Mr Myrie, who also presents Mastermind, left Kyiv yesterday after reporting from Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion.

Mr Myrie updated followers on Sunday to let them know he has safely arrived in Romania after a gruelling 17-hour journey from Kyiv to Moldova, and an eight-hour wait at Romania's border with Moldova.

Read more: Ukraine volunteers need a warehouse

The 57-year-old broadcaster shared a plea to be sympathetic to refugees who have fled war-torn countries, including Ukraine and Syria.

Mr Myrie tweeted: "It was a long, day of driving and queuing to get out of Kyiv. Imagine having to leave all you know in a hurry because you’re being shelled! What do you pack? Do pets come too? It’s freezing cold and you pray those in neighbouring countries will welcome you, not despise you.

"My thoughts are with the 1 million who’ve fled Ukraine because they might be killed. The millions who fled Syria and many other millions escaping repression, poverty, war. They all pray they’ll be welcomed in other countries as human beings. That’s all they ask."

During a dramatic broadcast early on in his stint in Ukraine, Mr Myrie and colleague Lyse Doucet paused to put on a flak jacket during a live segment as a chilling air raid siren sounded in Kyiv. He also had to take shelter in Kyiv as fighting approached Ukraine's capital city.

Speaking after the flak jacket broadcast, Mr Myrie told PA: "You’ve got to be aware that you are in the middle of a warzone, a live warzone, and anything could happen.

"None of us are stupid enough to stay out there reporting while bullets are raining down, that would be madness and frankly no story is worth that, but the advice was we could still keep broadcasting as long as we took the minimal protection of putting on safety gear.

"So that’s what we did and it meant we could continue telling the story, getting that across to our viewers so that they understand what is going on."

Go here for the very latest breaking news updates from across the North East

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