India evacuates stranded citizens from Ukraine via Moldova

Hindustan Times has learnt that the Indian embassy in Romania in coordination with the Moldovan authorities is organising the movement of Indian nationals stranded in Odessa (Ukraine) to Bucharest (Romania) via Moldova.

Published on: Mar 2, 2022, 17:10:14 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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The Indian government is evacuating its citizens stranded in Odessa town of Ukraine. The entire evacuation process is being carried out via Moldova to Romania. Hindustan Times has learnt that the Indian embassy in Romania in coordination with Moldovan authorities is organizing movement of Indian nationals stranded in Odessa (Ukraine) to Bucharest (Romania) via Moldova.

The Indian government is evacuating its citizens from Ukraine via Moldova (ANI file)

The airspace in Moldova is closed, hence the Indians are being sent to Bucharest. The embassy is organising two routes for buses - one for those crossing the Palanca border (Ukraine- Moldova) and being sent directly to Romania without stopping in Moldova.

Read: Emergency medicines, blankets & tents among relief aid dispatched to Ukraine

Another route for those who are in the camps located in and around the capital Chisinău. The bus services are being provided free of cost.

Since March 1, about 250 students have crossed over to Romania. They have all been sent by buses organised by embassy directly to Romania (Bucharest) from the border. About 80-100 nationals are still left in and around Chisinău (Capital) and most will be leaving by a bus today (on March 02).

In Bucharest, Indian Embassy is helping the Indian nationals with flights under Operation Ganga. The Embassy in coordination with Romanian Authorities, has ensured that no visa is required to exit Romania via special flights.

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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