India plans to send four senior ministers to Ukraine’s border nations, a government source said yesterday, to help in the rescue of thousands of its citizens who remain trapped more than four days after Russia’s invasion of the country.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi met senior officials yesterday to discuss evacuation efforts, amid rising concerns back home about the safety of some 16,000 Indians still in Ukraine, most of them students. Ministers Hardeep Puri, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kiren Rijiju & VK Singh will travel to neighbouring countries of Ukraine to co-ordinate the evacuation, according to an Indian government source.
Indians make up about a quarter of the 76,000 foreign students studying in Ukraine, mainly on medical courses, according to official estimates. Late on Sunday night, India’s embassy in Poland issued an advisory, saying it had arranged for buses at the Shehyni border in Ukraine, for those stranded there, to cross over into Poland. Opposition leaders and parents of students have urged Modi to take urgent measures to evacuate the remaining students out of Ukraine. “We can’t abandon our own people,” opposition lawmaker and Modi’s main opponent, Rahul Gandhi said in a tweet yesterday, asking that federal government share a detailed evacuation plan.
Fears of being caught up in the fighting, long traffic jams and severe weather meant students were reluctant to heed the Indian government’s suggestion they make their own arrangements to reach the border with Poland, Romania or Slovakia, Reuters reported on Friday. Meanwhile some Indian students, who were evacuated from war-hit Ukraine and arrived in New Delhi yesterday morning, alleged that Indian nationals are being discriminated against by the Ukrainian authorities as they try to flee.
One of the students, who identified himself as Praveen Kumar, said Indians and Nigerians are not being allowed to cross over the border. “The Ukrainian authorities are allowing their own people but not us,” he told the NDTV television channel. “We had to walk for about 15kms to reach the border,” Kumar added.
Another student, Shubham Kumar, said there is a lot of uncertainty and confusion over the evacuation process.
Hoping for an escape from the ravaging war, Indian students have been sleeping in parks in temperature below minus four degrees at the border check points. Many have made desperate appeals for help, sharing photos and videos on social media, requesting the Indian government to put an end to their ordeal.