Over 600 Indians evacuated from Sumy will board flight home on Thursday

New Delhi is planning to end the “Operation Ganga” by the evening on Thursday

Over 600 Indians evacuated from Sumy in eastern Ukraine reached Lviv on the western border of the East European nation and boarded a special train to cross over to neighbouring Poland on Wednesday.

The special aircraft chartered by the Government of India will fly them home on Thursday, when the last few flights from Poland will repatriate the ones evacuated from Ukraine.

New Delhi is planning to end the “Operation Ganga”, launched to fly home the evacuees from Ukraine through Poland, Romania, Hungary and Slovak Republic, by the evening on Thursday.

Also read | Have been able to move out all Indian students from Ukraine's Sumy: MEA

The additional officials sent to New Delhi's missions in Kyiv and other East European capitals to help evacuate the citizens stranded in the war-torn Ukraine are also expected to come back by the last flight to be operated under “Operation Ganga”, a source said on Wednesday.

Partha Satpathy, New Delhi's envoy to Kyiv, flagged off the special train with over 600 evacuees – mostly students – on board from Lviv Railway Station in western Ukraine on Wednesday.

The students were evacuated from war-torn Sumy to Poltava on Tuesday and were brought to Lviv on Wednesday.

Also Read | Count of Ukranian refugees hits two million, says UN

India also evacuated Pakistani citizen, Asma Shafique, along with its own nationals from Sumy, in addition to a Nepalese, two Tunisian and 13 Bangladeshis.

They had spent almost a fortnight stranded in Sumy ever since Russia launched its special military operations in Ukraine on February 24. They had been posting videos on social media, narrating their ordeal amid scarcity and depleting stocks of water, food and other essentials. They had been urging the Government of India to make arrangements for their evacuation from the conflict zone.

Though India evacuated a large number of citizens from western Ukraine, it found it difficult to rescue the ones stranded in the war zones of Kharkiv and Sumy and other areas in the eastern region of the country. A student from Haveri in Karnataka was also killed in Kharkiv on March 1 due to shelling. Finally, all Indians from Kharkiv were evacuated last week and from Sumy on Tuesday.

Over 22,000 Indians left Ukraine during the days before and after Russia invaded the country on February 24. The Operation Ganga, launched by the Government of India, facilitated the return of over 18,000 of them to the country.

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