Indian students slam 'gutless' govt for offering roses instead of support in Ukraine

'Had the government taken action on time, there would have been no need to give us these roses,' an anguished student said

A number of Indian students evacuated from Ukraine have criticised the government, claiming that they received little to no help from Indian Embassy officials, with one even slamming the gesture of handing over a rose to returnees.

"We are being given this (flowers) after returning to India. What should I do with this rose? What would our families do if something happened to us there?" Divyanshu Singh, one of the students who fled Ukraine and was flown back from Hungary on Thursday, told news broadcaster NDTV.

"Had the government taken action on time, there would have been no need to give us these roses," an anguished Singh added. '

"Our government is at fault. The US government informed its citizens on time, ours told us at the very end," he said

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Another student who was flown by the Indian Air Force from Bucharest told the channel that the government should not call be calling this operation an evacuation.

"They brought us in flights from a safe country, Romania, to here. How can this be called evacuation?"

"We do not want free flights, we want help to reach the borders," she said, adding that the government should help all Indians — particularly in Sumy and Kharkiv — reach the Western border safely.

Aneesh, a student from Bengaluru, in a terse message, said that the government did not have the "guts" to step foot in Ukraine. He was part of a group of students who was flown back to Karnataka from Hungary. The student also said that his group was able to reach the Hungarian border safely only because of the Indian flag that they had attached to the bus and urged ministers to "stop showing off."

On Wednesday, the Ministry of External Affairs said that nearly 17,000 Indians had fled Ukraine since the Embassy in Kyiv first began issuing advisories. Four flights run by the Indian Air Force from Hungary, Romania and Poland carrying 828 Indians together landed at the Hindon Air Base earlier on Thursday.

Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said the IAF and Indian carriers will operate 19 flights to bring back 3,726 Indians from Ukraine's neighbouring countries to India on Thursday.

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