New Delhi, Mar 1 (FN Agency) Around 4,000 Indian students are still in Kharkiv and Sumy, where fighting is raging between the Ukrainian forces and Russians, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla said on Tuesday, adding that evacuation of Indians from Kharkiv is the government’s top priority now. Shringla, who attended the Cabinet Committee on Security meeting in the evening to brief the Prime Minister of the developments, also said that the body of Indian national Naveen Gyanagoudar, who died in shelling earlier in the day in Kharkiv, has been kept in a morgue at the Kharkiv University and has been identified. He said India is in touch with the local authorities there to bring back the body.
The Foreign Secretary said that as of now “there are no Indians left in Kyiv”, and added that all the Indians who had contacted the Ministry of External Affairs and the Embassy in Kyiv have left Ukraine, but there could be some who are staying on voluntarily in Kyiv. He said that 7,700 Indians have left Ukraine through the border crossing points in Romania, Poland, Hungary, Moldova and Slovakia. While 2,000 Indians have returned to India so far, another 4,000-5,000 are waiting to board aircraft back home.
“Over the next three days 26 flights have been scheduled, and besides Budapest and Bucharest, we are also using airports in Poland and the Slovak Republic,” he added. He said that 60 percent of the 20,000 Indians, mostly students, have left Ukraine, and of the remaining 40 percent, 20 percent are in Kharkiv and Sumy, and the rest 20 percent are on the western border of Ukraine waiting to cross over. On evacuating students stranded in Kharkiv, he said a team from the Indian embassy in Moscow is in Belgorod near the border with Kharkiv to map out the way to bring out the Indians. “We are making plans, whichever way is possible for evacuation from Kharkiv, we will seize that. The conflict is intensifying in Kharkiv, we have to make sure that both sides are in a position to offer us safe passage and we are working to achieve that.”