10,800 Indian nationals evacuated from Ukraine

Russia-Ukraine conflict: According to the government, the C-17 aircraft carried 630 passengers, while the civilian flights evacuated 9,364 Indian nationals.

Published on: Mar 4, 2022, 17:54:14 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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At least 10,800 Indians have been brought back by special flights from Ukraine's neighbouring countries under Operation Ganga, the Centre said on Friday. The evacuation process was carried out by three Indian Air Force C-17 aircraft and 14 civilian flights, with one more civilian flight expected to arrive later today.

Meanwhile, two Russian IL-76 strategic lift planes are on standby to fly out to Moscow as soon as Indian nationals evacuated from northeastern cities of Kharkiv and Sumi are taken to the Russian capital.

More than 10,800 Indians have been brought back to India

According to the government, the C-17 aircraft carried 630 passengers, while the civilian flights evacuated 9,364 Indian nationals. A total of seven IAF flights have brought back 1,428 Indian nationals and delivered 9.7 tonnes of relief material to Ukraine.

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On Friday, the civilian flights included 4 from Bucharest (Romania), 2 from Kosice (Slovakia), 4 from Budapest (Hungary), 3 from Rzeszow (Poland). The IAF flew 2 flights from Bucharest and 1 from Budapest.

On Saturday, 11 special civilian flights are expected to bring back more than 2200 Indians, with 10 landing in New Delhi and one in Mumbai. Five flights will originate from Budapest, two from Rzeszow and four from Suceava. Four C-17 aircraft are airborne for Romania, Poland and Slovakia, which are expected to reach late at night and early morning tomorrow.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More