Amidst the growing Ukraine-Russia crisis, India has decided to send four Union ministers to the neighbouring countries of Ukraine to help in evacuating students stuck at various borders. Briefing the media persons, official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Arindam Bagchi said “Four Union ministers are going to four countries near Ukraine to help in the evacuation of the Indian students who are stuck there.”

He confirmed that Union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia will travel to Romania & Moldova to help in smooth evacuation of the students; at the border of Slovakia Kiren Rijiju will be there; Hardeep Singh Puri at Hungary border and former Gen VK Singh is heading to Poland. These four ministers are going as special envoys of Indians to help in bringing back those who are stuck on various borders.

Under “Operation Ganga’’ India is bringing back the students who have been stuck in the conflict zone and in non-conflict zones. The ministers are heading to the four countries to help in the smooth and safe evacuation process.

There are around 18,000 Indian students who are in Ukraine to study medicine, IT and other subjects and post Russian invasion are seeking evacuation from there.

The decision to send four ministers to oversee smooth evacuation was taken at a high-level meeting which was chaired by Prime Minister Narender Modi on Monday and present at the meeting were other ministers including Dr S Jaishankar, Piyush Goyal  Modi, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Gen (retd) VK Singh, and Kiren Rijiju. Also present were NSA Ajit Doval, Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla and other senior officials.

 Operation Ganga

The operation is being carried out to evacuate the Indians from Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, after Ukraine closed its airspace.

The official spokesperson dismissed rumours that the students are paying exorbitant money for the evacuation flights. “No one is paying any money for these evacuation flights. The government is not changing any money to bring them back.”

How many flights are back?

So far there have been six evacuation flights which have landed in India with almost 1386 Indian nations. These Indians have come from Poland, Romania and Hungary. A flight from Budapest landed earlier today with 240 Indians. All the flights have been welcomed by Union ministers and State Chief ministers.

On Sunday evening in a special briefing Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla said that several advisories were issued before the war broke out and almost 4000 Indian nationals left the conflict zone.

It is estimated that when Operation Ganga was launched around 15000 Indians were left in Ukraine.

Since the Ukraine airspace was closed four land evacuation points were identified through neighbouring countries – Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia.

The official spokesperson confirmed that India is sending humanitarian aid including medicines at the request of Ambassador of Ukraine Igor Polikha, here in India.

Military aircraft for evacuation

The situation is different in Ukraine as compared to Afghanistan when India had sent military aircraft to evacuate Indians when Afghanistan was taken over by Taliban 2.0 last August.

“We are evacuating through commercial flights and we are open to using military aircraft if need arises. Sending military aircraft there involves more countries,” he added.