Gaddafi’s nurse Galyna Kolotnytska arrived in Kiev in the early hours of Sunday night by plane along over other 120 Ukrainians who were evacuated from the unrest Libya, the Channel 5 news channel reported.
The channel showed brief footage of a well-built blond woman walking into the arrivals hall at Kiev’s Boryspil airport, turning away from cameras and immediately being ushered away by family.
Reports said she then travelled in a private car to her family’s home outside Kiev.
Ukraine’s Segodnya daily published on Saturday an interview with her daughter Tatyana in which she said her mother had been shocked by the violence raging in Libya and was planning to return home.
“Mum called yesterday. She says that she is in Tripoli,” Tatyana Kolotnytska told the daily.
Nine years
“There is shooting, fighting and everything else they show on television. “She spoke in a calm voice, asked us not to worry, and said she will be home soon.”
Kolotnytska left Ukraine for Libya nine years ago. She initially worked as a nurse in a hospital and became Gaddafi’s nurse later.
Good salaries meant that Libya became a popular destination for Ukrainian medical workers during the 1990s and before the current unrest hundreds of Ukrainian nurses and doctors were working in the country.
The diplomatic cables, which were sent by diplomats in Tripoli to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009, reveal that Gaddafi was almost always accompanied by Kolotnytska.
Gaddafi “relies heavily on his long-time Ukrainian nurse, Galyna Kolotnytska, who has been described as a ‘voluptuous blonde’,” said one dispatch.