Russia was one of a number of countries that warned its citizens to leave Iraq yesterday in reaction to a spate of kidnappings across the country.
France followed Germany in issuing a formal warning urging its citizens to leave, calling the kidnappings "unacceptable". The Czech Republic issued similar instructions.
The British Foreign Office said it continued to advise against all but the most essential travel to Iraq.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said a warning to Irish people at the beginning of last year against travelling to Iraq still applied.
The abduction of hostages has sparked outrage in anti-war Russia and fears that Ukraine may waver in its support for the US-led occupation of the Gulf state. Eight Russian and Ukrainian workers were freed in Iraq yesterday, a day after being taken hostage by insurgents.
Around 40 foreign hostages from 12 countries are currently being held by insurgents in Iraq, and the FBI is involved investigations into the abductions, a coalition spokesman said yesterday.
"The FBI is working with coalition forces and Iraqi security forces to seek out the hostage takers and the hostages," he added.
The Russian energy company employing the five Ukrainians and three Russians said they were freed after their captors realised that they were not Americans.
But Russian firms still insisted they would withdraw hundreds of workers from a country now bedevilled with kidnappings.
One of the eight workers seized told Russian television that about eight men wearing masks and wielding Kalashnikov rifles and grenades had snatched them on Sunday night.
But he said they had been released as soon as it became clear that they were citizens of Russia, a fierce critic of US military action in Iraq.
"I will stay in Iraq," said the man, identified only as Igor. "Russia was not an enemy to anyone."
"I was told they were kidnapped by mistake," said the head of the Interenergoservis company, for whom the men work and which is rebuilding a power station near Baghdad. He said the firm was considering pulling its workers out of Iraq.
But Russia's leading contractor in the country said it had already evacuated its staff. "All of our company's employees, all 370 of them, are being evacuated from Iraq," said a spokesman for Technoprom. About 500 Russians were believed to be working in Iraq, most restoring Iraq's power sector, and with some involved in the oil industry.
Russian officials, having criticised the US-led campaign in Iraq from the start, said they would help their fellow citizens leave the country, but that it was ultimately up to individual companies to decide whether to stay or go.
"Russian citizens are encouraged not to travel to Iraq in connection with the sharp escalation of the situation there and those who are there are encouraged to leave the country," said Mr Igor Ivanov, head of Russia's Security Council, adding that Moscow had "readied the necessary plans to evacuate Russian citizens" from the country.
Ukraine's foreign minister, Mr Konstantin Gryshchenko, said after talks with his Russian counterpart that he hoped his country's workers would remain in Iraq for now.
Ukraine has some 1,600 troops in Iraq, but public support for their presence has wavered at home since a contingent was forced to beat a hasty retreat from the town of Kut, amid increasing attacks on foreign troops and civilians.
