In a huge relief for India, all its students trapped in Ukraine’s Sumy moved out of the city through a Humanitarian Corridor today, a day after a localised ceasefire announced by the Russians collapsed and fierce fighting resumed, blocking their exit to safety.
MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said the students were being taken to Poltava, some 175 km south of Sumy, from where they will board trains to western Ukraine.
“Happy to inform that we have been able to move out all Indian students from Sumy. They are currently en route to Poltava, from where they will board trains to western Ukraine,” Bagchi tweeted.
Nearly 700 Indian students in Sumy had waged a doughty battle in bomb shelters and basements of their hostels in frigid weather, low on food, drinking water and other essential supplies over the last several days as Russian forces clobbered the city with rockets and heavy gunfire.
“Flights under Operation Ganga are being prepared to bring them home,” Bagchi said but did not specify from which border point and when will they be evacuated from Ukraine to board flights for their return to India.
The MEA spokesperson also posted a video on Twitter showing Indian students having refreshments in the backdrop of parked buses.
Efforts to evacuate the students from Sumy had failed on Monday as a tenuous ceasefire declared by the Russians crumbled shortly after getting underway.
Many students, who had boarded the buses for their journey to Poltava, were asked to disembark, as the ceasefire failed to take hold.
“The evacuation from Sumy has started. There was finally some good news today. All Indian students will be evacuated from Sumy on Tuesday itself. They will be taken to a safe location from where they will be brought to India,” said Anshad Ali, a student coordinator.
“We stood in a queue for three hours in freezing cold on Monday, waiting to board the buses and then, we were told that we cannot go. Thankfully, we have left Sumy. I am hoping that we will be in a safe zone soon,” medical student Aashiq Hussain Sarkar said, as fatigued students began the trip to Poltava, leaving behind broken and charred buildings and smouldering pieces of weaponry destroyed in war.
The Indian embassy in Ukraine issued an advisory urging all stranded Indian nationals to make use of the “humanitarian corridor” and evacuate using trains, vehicles or any other available means of transport keeping in mind their safety.
Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine deepened as Russian forces intensified their shelling and food, water, heat and medicine grew increasingly scarce, in what the country condemned as a medieval-style siege by Moscow to batter it into submission.
A third round of talks between the two sides ended with a top Ukrainian official saying there had been minor, unspecified progress toward establishing safe corridors that would allow civilians to escape the fighting.
Russia’s chief negotiator said he expects those corridors to start operating Tuesday.
But that remained to be seen, given the failure of previous attempts to lead civilians to safety amid the biggest ground war in Europe since World War II.
Well into the second week of the invasion, with Russian troops making significant advances in southern Ukraine but stalled in some other regions, a top US official said multiple countries were discussing whether to provide the warplanes that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been pleading for.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces continued to pummel cities with rockets, and fierce fighting raged in places. In the face of the bombardments, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces were showing unprecedented courage.
“The problem is that for one soldier of Ukraine, we have 10 Russian soldiers, and for one Ukrainian tank, we have 50 Russian tanks,” Zelenskyy told ABC News in an interview that aired Monday night.
He noted that the gap in forces was diminishing and that even if Russian forces “come into all our cities,” they will be met with an insurgency.
In one of the most desperate cities, the encircled southern port of Mariupol, an estimated 200,000 people – nearly half the population of 430,000 – were hoping to flee, and Red Cross officials waited to hear when a corridor would be established.
The city is short on water, food and power, and cellphone networks are down. Stores have been looted as residents search for essential goods. (Agencies)