Students rescued from Ukraine’s Sumy are expected to reach India on Thursday, the Indian embassy in Ukraine has said. The ambassador flagged off a special train at Lviv railway station carrying 600 students on Wednesday. “They will travel to Poland and are expected to board evacuation flights to India tomorrow,” the embassy said in a tweet.
More than 18,000 Indians were safely evacuated in a week. Most students stuck in Sumy were from the Medical Institute of Sumy State University and travelled to Poltava on Tuesday after a 13-day wait. The evacuation from Sumy happened after a series of diplomatic talks and strategic execution of a plan. The decision to choose western side of Ukraine, instead of the closer, eastern cities closer to Russia was taken as it was a tested route.
“The western side was a tested route. There were no issues with clearances from the Ukrainian forces too,” an official said. It helped that Russia had agreed to help with evacuation via the eastern border of Ukraine to Russia. The buses first took the students by road from Sumy to nearby Sudzha from where the Russians promised a safe passage through their territory. The presence of Ukrainian forces on the shorter route to the eastern side could have stalled the evacuation.
Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri said the exercise was ‘one of a kind’. “During the Gulf war, large numbers of people were brought back because of military action at a particular place. Here, in terms of logistics, it was a bit of a one-of-a-kind situation. Some of them came on their own. Some were in groups. Every situation is different. Here, the ground situation was very different.”
Under Operation Ganga, 76 flights were sent to Romania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova to rescue Indian citizens. Union ministers Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kiren Rijiju, VK Singh and Puri were posted in four neighbouring countries. The Indian embassy also set up a control room in Budapest to coordinate the evacuation. Over 100 officials and volunteers mapped the transportation, safety and accommodation needs of students and sent help.
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