WATCH: First Air India flight with Indian evacuees from Ukraine lands in Mumbai
Premium- As the flight landed, Piyush Goyal received the returnees in the flight. He tweets, Welcome back to the motherland!
First Air India flight carrying 219 Indian evacuees from Ukraine has landed in the Mumbai airport from Bucharest on Saturday evening. While receiving the returnee, central minister Piyush Goyal said, “Since the beginning of this crisis, our main objective was to bring back each and every Indian stranded in Ukraine."
He further said on Twitter, Welcome back to the motherland! Glad to see the smiles on the faces of Indians safely evacuated from Ukraine at the Mumbai airport. The government led by PM Narendra Modi is working relentlessly to ensure safety of every Indian.
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The plane had taken off from the Romanian capital Bucharest this afternoon.
"Since the beginning of this crisis, our main objective was to bring back each and every Indian stranded in Ukraine. 219 students have arrived here. This was the first batch, the second will reach Delhi soon. We'll not stop until all of them are back home," Goyal told ANI.
Urging the returnees to speak to their friends, he said, "Government is working in mission mode to ensure safety of our citizens. The Minister said that PM Narendra Modi has spoken with the Ukrainian President and stressed about the safety of Indian citizens. The Russians have also promised to help evacuate all Indians."
Earlier in the day, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar took to Twitter to say that AI1944 flight with "219 Indian nationals has taken off from Romania".
"Regarding evacuation of Indian nationals from Ukraine, we are making progress. Our teams are working on the ground round the clock. I am personally monitoring," he added.
Meanwhile, two more Air India evacuation flights -- one for Bucharest and one for Hungarian capital Budapest -- departed from Delhi earlier today.
Indian nationals who reached the Ukraine-Romania border and Ukraine-Hungary border by road have been taken to Bucharest and Budapest, respectively, by Indian government officials so that they can be evacuated in these Air India flights, they said.
The first evacuation flight AI1944 departed from Bucharest at 1.55 PM (Indian Standard Time) with 219 Indians and is expected to land at the Mumbai airport at around 9 PM on Saturday, they said.
The second evacuation flight AI1942 and third evacuation flight AI1940 are expected to return from Bucharest and Budapest, respectively, to the Delhi airport on Sunday morning, they mentioned.
Prior to the closure of the Ukrainian airspace, Air India had operated a flight to Ukraine's capital Kyiv on February 22 that brought 240 people back to India.
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