A special flight carrying 242 Indians evacuated from war-hit Ukraine arrived at Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport in Delhi from Poland on Friday.
Most of the Indian citizens who arrived were from the North-Eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy. For the last several days, Sumy has been witnessing heavy shelling and intense exchange of fire between Russians and Ukrainian forces.
“Bombardment occurred even on the day we left, not in our area but in the city. The Indian government, Red Cross, & Indian Embassy helped us a lot & built a green corridor to safely evacuate us. I’m thankful to PM Modi Ji,” said Hardeep, a student of Sumy State University.
Prerna Chaudhary, another student from Sumy, said, “We kept ourselves strong, we had the belief that the Indian embassy will evacuate us soon. We faced no problems (during the evacuation), we got direct buses, trains. We were properly evacuated. We did not even have to stand on the border, all the arrangements were nicely done.”
ANI had previously reported that arrangements for the evacuation of stranded Indian students were made on both sides of Ukraine as well as the Russian border.
Ukrainian drivers were not willing to drive towards the Russian side. However, local arrangements for buses were made. ANI learnt from sources that India demanded escort from Ukraine and it was provided after some delay.
Red Cross also helped and humanitarian passage for all international students was created and students were finally evacuated. They were asked to maintain radio silence until they crossed the danger zone.
India has brought back over 20,000 stranded citizens from the war-torn country.