Ukraine crisis: India continues efforts to evacuate over 700 students from Sumy

India continued its efforts to evacuate over 700 Indian students from the embattled northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy on Sunday. However, it found little success as severe shelling and airstrikes continued.

Meanwhile, a tweet from Indian embassy in Ukraine said that its team has been stationed in Poltava to coordinate safe passage of Indian students stranded in Sumy to Western borders via Poltava. It said a confirmed time and date for evacuating the students will be issued soon.

Team from Embassy of India is stationed in Poltava City to coordinate the safe passage of Indian students stranded in Sumy to Western borders via Poltava.
Confirmed time & date will be issued soon. 🇮🇳n students advised to be ready to leave on short notice.@MEAIndia @opganga

— India in Ukraine (@IndiainUkraine) March 6, 2022

Earlier, news agency PTI reported people familiar with the matter as saying that there was no indication yet from the Russian and Ukrainian sides to create a "humanitarian corridor" or to put in place a ceasefire to evacuate them notwithstanding India's repeated calls for such an arrangement.

"There has been no real movement. But we are continuing with our efforts to evacuate them," said one of the people cited above.

On Saturday morning, the Indian students posted a video saying they have decided to leave for the Russian border and that the Indian government and the embassy in Ukraine will be responsible if anything happens to them.

Following the video, the Indian embassy in Ukraine requested them not to endanger their lives and conveyed that it will leave no stone unturned to safely evacuate them.

The students relented following the assurance.

India has brought back over 15,920 of its nationals in 76 flights under mission "Operation Ganga' which was launched on February 26 following Russia's military aggression against Ukraine.

(With PTI inputs)

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