"I've been away for so long, in the circumstances, it's been very scary."
Carlow student Racheal Diyaolu has arrived safely back in Ireland after fleeing Ukraine.
The 19-year-old was among hundreds of international students studying in Sumy when the Russian invasion began.
A previous mission intended to rescue Diyaolu over the weekend failed after Russian troops shot at the rescue mission van.
A second mission got underway earlier this week and Diyaolu safely arrived in Dublin Airport late on Thursday night on a flight from Frankfurt.
Racheal told
RTÉ that she was "really overwhelmed but really happy".
"I've been away for so long, in the circumstances, it's been very scary. I didn't know when I'd get to be home, so I'm really happy to be back", she said.
https://twitter.com/rtenews/status/1502179708925923332
She managed to escape Ukraine with the help of two volunteers, Joe McCarthy and Gary Taylor, who travelled from Scotland to help civilians get to safety.
"They are average guys, they were always ready to have a laugh and take care of us if we needed anything. I don't know what I would do without them," she told RTÉ.
"It was a very anxious journey. We had a lot of really bad roads, things went wrong along the way, but we stayed positive and knew that once we were out of Sumy it was [on the] home straight.
"We knew we just had to go a little bit further and we'd be back home soon."
