SRINAGAR: In yet another batch, almost 10 Kashmir students are reported to have flown to Delhi from ravaged Ukraine, currently under invasion from Russia. However, most of the students continued to be trapped and are making efforts to reach any of the neighbouring countries for a flight back home.
The situation in Sumy state continues to be serious as the students trapped in the region have conveyed that they are starving. The region is close to Russia on the border and the Government of India had sought help from Moscow also. There were almost 200 Indian students trapped in this state including seven or eight students from Jammu and Kashmir.
Meanwhile, the Indian embassy in Ukraine has asked all Indians stuck in the East European country to fill up an online form on an urgent basis. The Google Form has been appended to a tweet they have issued.
It seeks details about their name, e-mail, and phone number, address of current stay, passport details, gender and age. It wants the applicants to choose from the locations Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Chernivtsi, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Khmelnytsky, Kirovograd, Kyiv, Luhansk, Lviv, Mykolaiv and Odesa. The areas of Poltava, Rivne, Sumy, Ternopil, Vinnytsya, Volyn, Zakarpattya, Zaporozhzhya and Zhytomyr are also listed in the form.
While it has become very difficult to run a flight from Ukraine, the Government of India is running rescue flights from all the countries in the Ukraine neighbourhood. These include Romania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova. Ukraine has already closed its airspace for civilian aircraft. During the day, Russia devastated the Vinnytsia airport in a series of missile attacks.
MEA has said it has already flown more than 13,300 Indians home in 63 flights under Operation Ganga. He said evacuation from Sumy continues to be the top priority.
Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has stated that Operation Ganga has made a distinction of India in the world. “At a time when other countries are finding it difficult to rescue its citizens, we managed to get our people out. This proves the increasing influence of India in the world,” Modi was quoted saying in a public speech.
