The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Thursday said the pace of India's evacuation operation from Ukraine is accelerating and about 1,000 Indians have left Kharkiv to nearby Pisochyn pursuant to its advisory a day ago.
MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said at a media briefing that the Indian side is in touch with both Ukrainian and Russian authorities to examine the modalities of how Indians can be evacuated from both Kharkiv and Sumy.
"We are closely following the developments in Kharkiv, Sumy and other cities in eastern Ukraine. As you know yesterday we issued an advisory for Indians in Kharkiv to leave the city by 6PM local time. Pursuant to this a large number of students have left Kharkiv and are currently in the nearby issue of Pisochyn. We estimate this number to be around 1,000," he said.
"We are currently looking at transportation options to move them from there to western Ukraine or southern Ukraine depending on the transportation options," Bagchi said.
He said the pace of India's evacuation operation is continuing to accelerate. Fifteen flights landed in India during last 24 hours, bringing back more than 3,000 Indians, he said. Bagchi also informed that 18 flights have been scheduled for next 24 hours to bring back Indian nationals from Ukraine. A total of about 18,000 Indian nationals have left Ukraine since our first advisory was released, he said.
India has been evacuating its citizens through special flights from Ukraine's western neighbours such as Romania, Hungary and Poland as the Ukrainian airspace has been shut since February 24 due to the Russian military offensive.
The IAF's four evacuation flights with 798 Indians from the Romanian capital Bucharest, Hungary's Budapest and Polish city Rzeszow landed at the Hindon airbase here on Thursday morning, sources said.
The Indian Air Force's first flight carrying 200 people from Bucharest landed at 1.30 am and Union Minister of State for Defence Ajay Bhatt welcomed them at the airbase, they noted.
All four IAF flights were conducted using C-17 military transport aircraft, sources said.
India has been evacuating its citizens through special flights from Ukraine's western neighbours such as Romania, Hungary and Poland as the Ukrainian airspace has been shut since February 24 due to the Russian military offensive.
The second evacuation flight of the IAF with 210 Indians from Budapest landed at the Hindon airbase on Thursday morning, sources mentioned.
A little while after the second, the IAF's third evacuation flight arrived at the airbase from Rzeszow with 208 Indians, they said, adding the fourth flight brought 180 Indians from Bucharest.
Four Union ministers have gone to Ukraine's western neighbours to facilitate the evacuation of Indian nationals.
Hardeep Singh Puri is in Hungary, Jyotiraditya Scindia is in Romania, Kiren Rijiju is in Slovakia and V K Singh is in Poland.