MOSCOW, May 2. /TASS/. Ukraine’s privately owned air carrier SkyUp, tasked with evacuating civilians from Sudan, rejected a Russian citizen’s request to board its flight, Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday.

"When special services controlled by the Kiev regime found out that it was a Russian citizen [who filed a request for evacuation], they refused to evacuate him, although his colleagues - citizens of Ukraine and Georgia - were flown out," she said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier on Tuesday that the Russian Aerospace Forces had airlifted more than 200 people out of Sudan, including those from Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Bangladesh, Sudan and Ukraine. They arrived in Moscow later in the day.

Crisis in Sudan

The situation in Sudan escalated amid disagreements between the army chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who also heads the ruling Sovereignty Council, and the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (known as Hemedti), who is al-Burhan’s deputy in the council.

The main points of contention between the two military organizations pertain to the timeline and methods for unifying the armed forces of Sudan, as well as who should be appointed as commander-in-chief of the army: a career military officer, which is al-Burhan’s preferred option, or an elected civilian president, as Dagalo insists.

On April 15, armed clashes between the rival military factions erupted near a military base in Merowe and in the capital, Khartoum. According to the country’s health ministry, more than 600 people have been killed in the country since the conflict broke out. According to the country’s trade union of doctors, at least 400 civilians have been killed in the country since the conflict broke out.