PM Modi calls on Indian Air Force C-17s to boost evacuation efforts
The IAF C-17 aircraft can carry 336 passengers and was used in evacuation in Afghanistan. But in one of the missions a US craft carried 670 passengers, which is a world record.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called for the Indian Air Force to join the evacuation efforts under Operation Ganga, official sources told Hindustan Times. Leveraging the capabilities of the IAF will ensure that more people can be evacuated in the shortest possible time.
The IAF C-17 aircraft will carry out evacuation to bring back Indian nationals
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It will also help deliver humanitarian aid more efficiently. Indian Air Force is likely to deploy several C-17 aircrafts as part of Operation Ganga from today.
It is understood that the decision was taken during the meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last evening. During the meeting, the PM said that the government is working round the clock to ensure safety of Indians in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the Indian embassy in Ukraine has issued a fresh advisory to the Indian nationals, asking them to leave Kyiv urgently, preferably by available trains or any other means.
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India has been carrying out the evacuation process under Operation Ganga on a war-footing. The government has sent four union ministers to coordinate and expedite the evacuation process from the borders surrounding Ukraine. Hardeep Singh Puri, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and General VK Singh are at the borders monitoring the entire operation.
As of now, India is leading in evacuation mission in war-hit Ukraine. The other countries like China, US and UK have either called off their evacuation mission or expressed inability to secure their nationals. But Operation Ganga is in full swing.
Besides this, the government is also sending humanitarian aid and medicine supplies to Kyiv on Ukraine's request.
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India has been carrying out the evacuation process under Operation Ganga on a war-footing. The government has sent four union ministers to coordinate and expedite the evacuation process from the borders surrounding Ukraine. Hardeep Singh Puri, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and General VK Singh are at the borders monitoring the entire operation.
As of now, India is leading in evacuation mission in war-hit Ukraine. The other countries like China, US and UK have either called off their evacuation mission or expressed inability to secure their nationals. But Operation Ganga is in full swing.
Besides this, the government is also sending humanitarian aid and medicine supplies to Kyiv on Ukraine's request.
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.
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