Tag: Indian students in Ukraine

  • 20,000 Indians have left Ukraine, about 3,000 still stranded: MEA

    Express News Service

    NEW DELHI: Around 20,000 Indians have left Ukraine. The two areas where there is a relatively higher concentration of Indians is Sumy and Kharkiv.

    “There are over 700 Indians in Sumy. It’s a conflict zone and there is heavy shelling. We are restricted in our evacuation process. We are exploring all options. Westward evacuation through the Russian border is an option too, but since it is around 60 km away and in a conflict zone, we can’t risk the lives of our people,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi.

    MEA hopes for a ceasefire around Sumy as then it would be safe to evacuate Indians stuck there.

    In Kharkiv, there are approximately 300 Indians and evacuation efforts are challenged there too due to shelling. 

    In Pesochin, Indian students left the place on Thursday through five buses that the Indian government had arranged for them. “We are exploring all options of buses, trains whatever we can manage for our people. The role of student coordinators has been tremendous in this entire evacuation process and we will continue our efforts till the last Indian is out,” Bagchi added.

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    The Indian government has been able to bring 20,000 Indians out of Ukraine. Since the evacuation process began nearly 48 flights have been used to bring them back to India. Around 16 flights are scheduled to bring back those in the bordering countries of Ukraine – which include four Indian Air Force C17 aircraft – on Saturday. Around 10,500 Indians have returned to India.

    The majority of Indians who are out of the Ukrainian border would be back in India by Saturday.

    There are approximately 2000 to 3000 more Indians left in Ukraine. These figures are higher than the earlier projections of 20,000 as many obviously would not have registered with the embassy.

    Meanwhile, the Indian government has been getting requests from students of other nationalities like Bangladesh and Nepal for evacuation and they have said they would do the needful.”One Bangladeshi student has flown in with us,” Bagchi said.

    Once most Indians are out of Ukraine, the government could explore the possibility of putting the few who are left behind on commercial flights and bear the expenses.

  • Operation Ganga: 80 flights, 24 ministers pressed in action to evacuate Indians from Ukraine

    By ANI

    NEW DELHI: In a bid to further scale up the evacuation efforts, the government has deployed 80 flights under ‘Operation Ganga’ to evacuate stranded Indians from Ukraine.

    The government has also roped in more than two dozen Ministers to monitor evacuation missions without any hiccups, sources told ANI on Thursday.

    Sources told ANI that the government has accelerated the evacuation plan for the Indians stranded in Ukraine. Total flights ferry has been increased to bring more and more Indians. By March 10, a total of 80 flights will be pressed into service to evacuate the stranded Indians.

    These flights belong to the fleet of Air India, Air India Express, IndiGo, Spice Jet, Vistara, Go Air, and also planes from Air Force.

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    Sources also told ANI that the 35 evacuations have been planned from the Romanian capital Bucharest, which include 14 flights of Air India, eight of Air India Express, seven of IndiGo, one of Spice Jet, three of Vistara and two of Indian Air Force.

    A total of 28 flights have been scheduled to take off from Hungary’s capital Budapest. Among these 28, 15 flights are from Go Air, 9 from IndiGo, 2 from Air India, 1 from Indian Air Force, and 1 from Spice Jet. A total of nine flights are scheduled from Rzeszow, Poland, which includes eight from IndiGo and 1 from Indian Air Force, while five flights will take off from Suceava, Romania and 3 flights will take off from Kosice, Slovakia.

    Sources also stated that approximately 17,000 stranded Indians will be evacuated from Ukraine by these 80 flights, scheduled to take off from Budapest, Bucharest, and Rzeszow, Suceava, and Kosice.

    Till March 2, a total of 24 flights have landed under ‘Operation Ganga’. The government started ‘Operation Ganga’ on February 26 to evacuate stranded Indians from Ukraine.

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    The first flight carrying Indians landed in Mumbai on February 26 which was received by Piyush Goyal, Minister for Commerce and Industry, Textile, Consumer Affairs, Food, and Public Distribution.

    Prime Minister has sent four Ministers Jyotiraditya Scindia, Hardeep Singh Puri, Kiren Rijiju, and VK Singh to Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Poland to oversee the evacuation of Indians.

    The Modi government has also roped in ministers to monitor smooth evacuation and receive Indians at Delhi and Mumbai Airport who are coming from Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Poland under Operation Ganga.

    Ministers Jitendra Singh, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Rao Inderjeet Singh, Narayan Rane, G Kishan Reddy, Kailash Choudhary, Parshottam Rupala, Bhagwant Khuba, Virendra Kumar, Meenakshi Lekhi, V. Muraleedharan, Bhagwat Karad, Nisith Pramanik, Shantanu Thakur, Rao Saheb Danve, Darshana Jardosh, Devusinh Chauhan, Bharati Pravin Pawar, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma, Subhas Sarkar, Kapil Patil have been assigned to receive the flights coming from neighboring countries of Ukraine carrying Indians. 

  • 7 flights to land in India carrying stranded Indians from Ukraine on Wednesday

    By ANI

    NEW DELHI: As many as seven flights will land in Delhi on Wednesday carrying stranded Indians from Ukraine under Operation Ganga, the government sources told ANI on Tuesday.

    A total of nine flights have already brought back stranded Indian nationals from Ukraine.

    The sources told ANI that the first flight of Indigo Airlines is taking off from Hungary’s capital Budapest on Tuesday evening and will land at Delhi Airport at 7:20 am on Wednesday. The Indigo flight has the capacity to carry 216 passengers.

    According to sources, flights will take off throughout the day from Budapest, Rzeszow, and Bucharest and will be landing at Delhi Airport by late evening on Wednesday.

    The union government has deployed around 20 flights from Air India, Air India Express, Indigo, and Spice Jet. Apart from these airlines, the Airforce has also been asked to evacuate Indians from the neighbouring countries of Ukraine.

    Air India flights have the capacity of carrying 250 passengers, Air India Express flights 180, while IndiGo planes can carry 216 passengers on board.

    ALSO READ | Indian student from Haveri district in Karnataka killed in shelling in Ukraine’s Kharkiv

    Meanwhile, at a high-level meeting on Monday evening over the Ukraine crisis, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the entire government machinery is working round the clock to ensure that all Indians there are safe and secure, informed Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi.

    This was the second high-level meeting chaired by the Prime Minister during the day over the prevailing situation in Ukraine.

    Government sources on Monday said that the ‘Special Envoys’ including Union Ministers Hardeep Singh Puri, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kiren Rijiju, and Gen (Retd) VK Singh will travel to neighbouring countries of Ukraine to coordinate evacuations of stranded Indians amid ongoing Russian military operations.

    On February 24, the Prime Minister chaired a Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) meeting in New Delhi on the Ukraine crisis.

    The union government has launched “Operation Ganga” to bring back stranded students and Indian citizens from the conflict-torn Ukraine. Special flights are being operated by Air India under “Operation Ganga”.

    External Affairs Ministry on Monday informed that over 8,000 Indian nationals have left Ukraine since the initial advisories were issued by the country. The Ministry also said that the six evacuation flight have landed in India bringing back around 1,400 citizens. 

  • Dollar exchange stopped; no way to return: Indian students in Ukraine narrate their ordeal 

    By PTI

    NEW DELHI:  Indian students woke up to air raid sirens and a suddenly well-lit sky and soon all hell broke loose on the streets of Kyiv, the capital of war-hit Ukraine, as some of them narrated their ordeal on Thursday with frantic people rushing to petrol stations, banks and departmental stores in chock-a-block traffic.

    “Tough times don’t last but tough people do,” Ashna Pandita, a third-year medical student, told PTI from her hostel in Kyiv over phone.

    Students are not able to exchange their currency as Ukrainian stores have stopped trading dollars.

    The Indian mission in Kyiv was planning to relocate Indian nationals to the western border and has advised them to keep their passport and necessary documents with them all the time.

    “We woke up at 4 AM with a bang as we saw skies lit up followed by air sirens,” said Pandita who studies at Taras Shevchenko National Medical University along with her twin brother Ansh.

    Besides Taras Shevchenko, two other universities — Bogomolets and UAFM — house a maximum number of Indian students in various streams.

    There was panic in the morning air as “we saw military students studying with us packing their bags to join the forces and there was a clear instruction that no one will be making any video recordings of movement of troops,” Pandita said.

    Bunkers in the hostel were opened and all students were directed to move there in case air sirens were sounded.

    The same drill has been started in all Metro stations.

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    Aikin Ash Muthoo, also a third-year student from the same college hailing from Jamshedpur, says initially he thought that an electric transformer had blown up but the confirmation of Russia carrying out an attack came from India.

    “My parents called up and informed me that there was an attack, news enough to pull me out of the bed to understand the situation as we were preparing to leave for home and were awaiting our turn on Air India flights,” Muthoo said.

    He said immediately the hostel staff started furnishing bunkers in the hostel so that people could be accommodated there in case of air raids by Russia.

    The hostel has around 40 Indians and the exact number of students was not available. “We immediately rushed to the departmental store and carried back ration for two weeks and some water to survive for another week or so,” he said, adding the exchange of dollars had been stopped.

    All the students were keeping an eye on the advisories issued by the Indian mission in Ukraine with the latest being that all flights for evacuation had been closed and alternative arrangements were being finalised so that “Indian nationals can be relocated to the western part of the country”.

    A fifth-year student at the same hostel, Shahshank Matta, who hails from Bengaluru and manages the Indian students, said, “We are not sure about what is happening other than that we will be getting evacuated to the western part of the country.

    ” Akash Kaul, studying in the fifth year at Bogomolets Medical University, said that panic was high on the streets of Kyiv from early hours of the morning.

    “It took me nearly three hours to cover a distance which normally takes 15 minutes by cab,” he said.

    “I was awakened to the news by my father and immediately I rushed to my apartment to keep my passport and other documents ready,” Kaul who was at his friend’s place said.

    He said while travelling he saw several Ukrainian nationals carrying bags and suitcases were moving out of Kyiv to safer places, “probably to the western part of the country and seeking refuge in neighbouring Poland”.

    Kaul had to change his schedule after Air India announced that its evacuation flight had been cancelled due to the closure of air space over Ukraine.

    Accompanied by Sampath Ganesh, hailing from Tamil Nadu, Nitin Roy, hailing from Kerala but at present settled in Rajasthan, and Pranjal Singh from Jaunpur, Kaul, who is staying in a rented apartment in Vidrandnyi Ave in Kyiv, is keeping a close watch on the advisory issued by the Indian mission.

    “I hope that something will be worked out soon,” he added.

    Back in India, the father of Ashna and Ansh, Anil Pandita is anxious and constantly in touch with the children.

    “They have limited stores and I hope things ease up soon.”

    He said that airlines escalated the ticket prices to an extent that it became virtually impossible for a middle-class family to afford it. “I had booked them for March 6 but now I don’t know whether they can make it,” Anil Pandita said in a choked voice.

    Muthoo’s father Aklesh said in a statement to PTI that they were worried as the children are short on cash as ATMs are not working and soon their supplies will come to an end.

    The parents made an appeal to the government to evacuate the Indian students from Ukraine at the earliest.