Over 600 Indian students, who were successfully evacuated from the war-torn Ukrainian city of Sumy through a humanitarian corridor on Wednesday, have reached New Delhi in three flights from Poland on Friday morning, a source has said.

“With the successful completion of the evacuation effort from Sumy, the government believes that it has managed to evacuate all student groups and most Indian nationals wanting to exit Ukraine,” the source said, indicating that ‘Operation Ganga’ may be drawing to an end.

The special group of Indian officials, many of them with knowledge of Russian, who were flown to Ukraine for the evacuation operation, are likely to now return to India, the Indian Embassy is expected to continue operating with some staff from the city of Lviv.

“The Indian students from the city of Sumy, located in north eastern Ukraine facing heavy fighting, travelled in buses all the way to Poltova, which is in Central Ukraine. Then they reached Lviv from where they boarded a special train to the Polish border for exiting the country,” the source explained.

More than 22,000 Indian nationals have left Ukraine since the first advisory was issued by the Indian Embassy in Ukraine in January this year.

Close to 20,000 Indian nationals who exited the country, mostly students spread in cities such as Kyiv, Kharkiv and Sumy, were evacuated through the government’s ‘Operation Ganga’, which brought back people from a number of border countries in over 90 special flights.

Special buses used

While most of the Indian students who were evacuated as part of ‘Operation Ganga’ made their own way to the borders, many of them having to walk long distances and negotiate their way into crowded trains, the students in Sumy and some stranded in Pisochin had to be evacuated through special buses.

The evacuation from Sumy was the most tricky as the city had been facing heavy shelling and firing and a temporary holding of fire had to be negotiated. “The students from Sumy were put in planes from the Polish city Rzeszow on Friday,” the source said.

Despite advisories issued by the Indian Embassy in Ukraine, asking all Indian nationals wanting to leave the country to do so this week in the last of the special flights, if there are some still left behind, they would continue to be assisted and may have to take commercial flights, the source added.

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