The SCMP said the party, comprising eight Malaysians and two foreign national dependents, embarked on their 782km journey to Poland in four cars, after a chartered bus allegedly failed to arrive.

A government source has confirmed with FMT that an evacuation is currently under way. A spokesman for Wisma Putra (the foreign ministry) chose not to comment on the SCMP report.

Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob said earlier today that the Malaysian embassy in Kyiv is in the process of evacuating eight citizens and two foreign dependents from Kyiv, and that 13 Malaysians had left Ukraine in the past weeks.

The SCMP said several official sources had told the newspaper, independently of each other, that Wisma Putra had bungled the evacuation of the embassy staff.

The SCMP said its sources had blamed government leaders such as Ismail and foreign minister Saifuddin Abdullah for their dismissive stance towards the Western intelligence they had received last month on the impending Russian invasion.

One source claimed Malaysian officials labelled the intelligence as a “Western narrative”, which led the evacuation mission becoming a “cluster f**k”.

“This situation is partly the consequence of having a minister who is so desperate to not fall for (a) Western narrative, (that) he starts believing the nonsense peddled by the other side,” another source said.

The SCMP said the United States evacuated most of its embassy staff from Kyiv on Feb 12, with Britain stating that it was moving its diplomatic mission out of Kyiv on Feb 18.