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Ukraine war: With Sumy evac, India’s Op Ganga may wind down
On Wednesday, Indian ambassador Partha Satpathy flagged off the special train taking the Indians to the Ukraine-Poland border at Lviv railway station, the Indian embassy said.
The group of some 600 Indians pulled out of the besieged Ukrainian city of Sumy was on Wednesday sent to the country’s western border on a special train so that they could be flown out from Poland, even as authorities began winding down India’s evacuation efforts.
The Indians were brought out of Sumy on Tuesday in a convoy of buses via a humanitarian corridor established after the Ukrainian and Russian authorities announced a ceasefire. The group, mostly students and about 20 professionals, was initially driven from Sumy to Poltava city.
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On Wednesday, Indian ambassador Partha Satpathy flagged off the special train taking the Indians to the Ukraine-Poland border at Lviv railway station, the Indian embassy said. The Indians are expected to board evacuation flights to India on Thursday. The mission tweeted several photos of Indian students from Sumy on the special train organised with the help of Ukrainian authorities.
The students in Sumy represented the largest concentration of stranded Indians in Ukraine, and people familiar with the matter said only a few small groups of Indians now remained in the war-torn country. Many of these Indians opted to stay back as they were married to Ukrainian citizens or had businesses there.
The last of the planned flights to bring back those who reached Ukraine’s bordering nations will depart on Thursday. With a majority of the Indians being pulled out of conflict zones or flown back home, the Indian side has begun winding down the evacuation efforts. The people said all efforts will be made to help Indians wishing to leave Ukraine, though the evacuation efforts will no longer be on the same scale as that witnessed in the past two weeks.
The people referred to the strong advisory issued by the Indian embassy on Tuesday urging all stranded Indian nationals to leave urgently and said it was imperative for them to get out in view of the worsening security situation.
“We still have a few Indians in Ukraine now. Some of them have decided to stay on, some are trying to find ways to leave. They are in isolated pockets. Some of them have roots and businesses there,” one of the people cited above said.
Most of the staff of the Indian embassy would be pulled out of Kyiv by Thursday, and these officials will operate from Lviv, where the mission has already established an office. A decision on how long the Indian diplomats will remain in Ukraine is linked to the security situation, the people said.
“We would like the embassy to function as long as possible but our officials are working in difficult and risky circumstances,” the person cited above said.
The people declined to go into the issue of Indians applying to fight with Ukraine’s International Legion in response to a call from President Volodymyr Zelensky. They referred to the embassy’s strong advisory that has called for everyone to leave Ukraine.
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They also dismissed repeated assertions by Russian leaders and officials that Indians had been held hostage at Kharkiv and Sumy, saying the Indian side hadn’t seen any instances of people being held hostage.
The people described the operation to get the Indians out of Sumy as the most challenging of all the evacuation efforts in Ukraine as it required an agreement between the Russian and Ukrainian sides on a lull in fighting. An aborted attempt to pull out the Indians on Tuesday fell apart because of a lack of understanding between the warring sides on a ceasefire.
Three Indian teams were on the ground to coordinate the exit of the convoy with the Indians from Sumy, and the Red Cross was contacted both in Geneva and Ukraine to facilitate the safe movement of the vehicles. Although the route from Sumy to Moldova was shorter and involved a drive of about three hours, it passed through a war zone. The Russian and Ukrainian sides agreed on a more circuitous route that involved a change of vehicles.
About a dozen foreign nationals, including Bangladeshis, Nepalese and a Pakistani student, were pulled out in the same convoy.
The people said Ukraine’s neighbouring countries made special arrangements to temporarily let in the Indians, including many who had lost or misplaced their passports. They also lauded the role played by student contractors, who coordinated with the students and formed an important of the Indian embassy’s network on the ground.
The Indian side is now moving towards the final phase of the evacuation efforts. Once the group of Indians from Sumy are flown out, the total number of Indians who have left Ukraine since January will be close to 23,000.
