Out of the 20,000 Indians, many of them students, stranded in Ukraine a little over 4,000 have been safely evacuated and brought back to India. Nine students from Goa are also waiting to be evacuated from Ukraine and they are in regular touch with the NRI Commissioner of Goa and all coordination to evacuate them is in process. Social media is flooded with pleas and requests from Indian citizens, especially students pursuing higher education in Ukrainian institutes, asking for their safe return to India.
Under ‘Operation Ganga’ which is launched to evacuate the stranded Indians from Ukraine, four flights have already operated from Bucharest and the Indians are safely landing in India and being received by the Union Civil Aviation Minister. The Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia has also promised that, “The Government of India will leave no stone unturned till we bring back every one of our people back home.”
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The External Affair Minister S Jaishankar is also in constant touch with his counterparts in Ukraine and other neighbouring countries to plan out the evacuation of Indians and constant messaging is being done on social media to make the stranded persons aware of the real time situation.
The task of evacuating became more challenging after Ukraine closed its airspace due to the “high risk of aviation safety” amid Russia’s intensifying military operation, followed by Russia imposing restrictions on civilian air traffic over north-eastern Ukraine. It became difficult for any civilian aircraft to land or even take-off from Ukraine.
On the morning of February 24, an Air India repatriation flight heading to Kyiv from Delhi to bring back about 250 Indian nationals was forced to turn back as the airspace over Ukraine was closed. Just hours before the closure of the airspace, a special flight of Ukraine International Airlines landed in Delhi with 182 Indians on board. On Tuesday, February 22, an Air India flight brought back 242 Indians, mostly students, to Delhi. The effort is on now through Bucharest, the capital city of Romania, a country situated to the South of Ukraine.
Union Minister of External Affairs Jaishankar had said that the governments of Ukraine’s neighbours Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland had agreed to help evacuate Indian citizens utilising their respective land routes. The four countries share Ukraine’s western border which is relatively safer, while Russian military forces are advancing their operations from the eastern borders of Ukraine. Spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs Arindam Bagchi had also tweeted out contact information for teams that Indian nationals near the border points with these countries could reach out to, adding that MEA teams from Indian embassies in Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland were on their way to their respective borders with Ukraine.
The teams are now deployed at Romania’s Suceava border, Hungary’s Zahony border post, opposite Uzhhorod in Ukraine, Poland’s Krakowiec land border with Ukraine and Slovakia’s Vysne Nemecke border and all Indians are reaching there to seek help for their evacuation from the war zone.
Besides evacuation efforts by land, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said that Indian Air Force aircraft could be pressed into service for evacuation measures. Also, the Indian Embassy in Kyiv has been issuing multiple advisories on social media about the course of action Indian citizens should take to secure immediate safety.
The Air India spokesperson has told the media that there were plans to send two more planes apart from the four (which has already landed in India with the evacuated persons) to Bucharest and Budapest on Sunday so that they can operate the fifth and sixth evacuation flights but it is “all highly tentative”.
Even though evacuation is a tough task, India is experienced in doing such jobs. Recently Government of India undertook evacuation operations from several countries in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. The Wuhan city in Hubei province of China had become the epicentre of the COVID-19 and there were hundreds of Indians stuck in the city. India engaged with China to safely evacuate its citizens and citizens of other friendly nations on a priority basis. Air India had operated two special flights for the evacuation efforts which brought back 654 passengers that included 647 Indian citizens. With this experience, it is very possible for India to evacuate all its citizens who are stranded and stuck in the war zone of Ukraine.
