PM Modi chairs another meeting on evacuation

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi called another high-level meeting on Saturday evening to discuss the situation in war-hit Ukraine and India’s evacuation efforts to bring back its citizens, official sources said.

Since Sunday, Modi has chaired a number of such meetings, as his government works to bring back Indian students who have been scrambling to leave Ukraine after Russia launched an attack on it. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and his cabinet colleague Piyush Goyal were part of the meeting chaired by Modi, besides several top bureaucrats.

India has launched “Operation Ganga” to evacuate its nationals and sent four Union ministers as the prime minister’s special envoys to Ukraine’s neighbours to coordinate the exercise. India on Saturday said its main focus now is on the evacuation of around 700 Indian students stranded in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy which has been witnessing bombings and airstrikes.

At a media briefing, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said India hopes to evacuate its citizens from Kharkiv and Pisochyn in the next few hours. “Our main focus is now on evacuating Indian students from Sumy.

We are exploring multiple options for their evacuation,” he said. 11 flights to bring back over 2,200 Indians on Sunday Eleven flights with more than 2,200 Indian evacuees will operate from Ukraine’s neighbouring countries to India on Sunday, the Civil Aviation Ministry said. About 3,000 Indians were airlifted on 15 flights to India on Saturday, the ministry’s statement noted.

“These included 12 special civilian and 3 Indian Air Force flights,” it added. The Ukrainian airspace has been shut since February 24 due to the ongoing Russian military offensive against it. Indian citizens who were stuck in Ukraine are being airlifted via its neighbouring countries such as Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland.

The IAF is conducting its flights using C-17 military transport planes. The civilian flight are being operated by Indian carriers such as IndiGo, Air India, Vistara and SpiceJet.