Indian students evacuated from Sumy leave for Poland

New Delhi: Government officials here said that the Indian students, who were evacuated from Sumy in Ukraine and transported to Poltava on Tuesday, have boarded a special train to reach Lviv from where they will be crossing over to Poland on Wednesday.
From Poland, they will be airlifted to New Delhi on Wednesday night or Thursday along with Bangladeshi and Nepalese nationals who were also evacuated from Sumy on Tuesday, the officials said.
The Indian Embassy in Ukraine said on Wednesday that the evacuated students, who were brought to Poltava using the humanitarian corridor by bus on Tuesday, have moved westward.
The Indian Embassy also said that a special train has been arranged with the assistance of Ukrainian authority to send them on an onward journey.
Sumy, which is located in the north-east part of Ukraine close to the Russian border, came under heavy shelling by Russian forces, which began their military operation in Ukraine on February 24.
Nearly 700 Indian students were stuck there as it was impossible to get them evacuated under heavy bombing. Even a top Russian military officer had offered buses to evacuate the Indian students, but the Indian officials said that the students couldn’t be evacuated until a ceasefire was announced by both the warring sides.
The governments of Russia and Ukraine announced a ceasefire and provided a humanitarian corridor on Tuesday from 10 a.m.(Moscow time) onwards after Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Ukrainie President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Monday, requesting them to provide safe passage to evacuate the remaining Indian nationals stuck in the war-torn country.
The Indian Embassy arranged buses to shift all 694 Indian students in Sumy along with Bangladeshi and Nepalese nationals to Poltava in central Ukraine on Tuesday.
The Embassy also issued an advisory, asking the remaining Indians stranded in the capital city of Kiev to leave by using the humanitarian corridor by any available means of transportation.
(IANS)