Indian ministers to leave for countries bordering Ukraine tonight

Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri will coordinate evacuation efforts from Hungary, Civil Aviation Minister Scindia will speed up evacuation from Romania and Moldova, Law Minister Kiren Rijiju will expedite the trans-border movement from Slovenia and Roads & Transport Minister Gen V K Singh will push Operation Ganga from the Poland border

Published on: Feb 28, 2022, 12:41:32 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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Concerned at the Indians stuck in war hit Ukraine, Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally called up Union Ministers Hardeep Puri, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and Gen V. K. Singh on Sunday evening to sound them out for on the ground help to speed up the evacuation mission.

It is learnt that Petroleum Minister and former diplomat Hardeep Singh Puri will coordinate evacuation efforts from Hungary, Civil Aviation Minister Scindia will speed up Indian evacuation from Romania and Moldova, Law Minister Kiren Rijiju will expedite the trans-border movement from Slovenia and Roads and Transport Minister and former Indian Army chief Gen V K Singh will push Operation Ganga from the Poland border.

Russian tank and armored convoys moving towards Kyiv as President Putin is pushing to capture Ukraine capital.

All the concerned ministers met Prime Minister Modi and External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar this morning with instructions to reach designated countries as soon as possible.

Russia-Ukraine war: LIVE coverage

While the PM is expected to take the third meeting on Indian evacuation this evening, there is a strong possibility that all the concerned ministers and designated officials would have left by that time or will take the first available flight to countries bordering Ukraine.

According to available information, there is a massive congestion on Ukraine borders with more than 3,000 Indians awaiting to cross the border to Poland via Kyviv-Lupsk axis or Kyviv-Kovel axis. With the Russians unrelenting in pushing the offensive against Ukraine from all sides, the situation at the border is tense as no able bodied Ukrainian is allowed to cross the border to boost the resistance effort.

Read: Kyiv lifts curbs, India tells students to travel away from 'active conflict'

It is due to these reasons that the border guards are muscling around as the war is approaching the interiors of Ukraine and there is no special treatment for any foreigners including Indians.

All the concerned ministers will have to negotiate their movements with the help of local Indian mission to ensure that nothing untoward happens to Indians waiting evacuation.

Read: India abstains on resolution to call for UN General Assembly session on Ukraine

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