Centre to send four Ministers to countries neighbouring Ukraine to oversee evacuation ops

Union ministers Hardeep Puri, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and V K Singh are the ones who will be travelling to Poland and Romania to oversee the operations.

PM Modi holds a meeting on Russia-Ukraine crisis. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while chairing a meeting over the ongoing crisis in Ukraine on Monday, decided to send four Union Ministers to Poland and Romania to oversee the evacuation of thousands of Indians, including students, who are still stuck there.

Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs, and Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Puri, Minister for Law and Justice Kiren Rijiju, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiradtiya Scindia, and and Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways and Civil Aviation General V K Singh are the ones who will be heading out soon and will be visiting as Special Envoys of the Indian government, sources said.

Apart from the four ministers, the meeting on Monday was attended by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, Minister of Commerce & Industry and Consumer Affairs & Food & Public Distribution and Textiles Piyush Goyal, PM’s Principal Secretary PK Mishra, Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, Foreign Secertary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, and other senior officials.

Thousands of Indian students who were studying in Ukraine have been stuck in the country which was invaded by Russia last week. Many of those students reached the country’s borders with Poland and Romania, but have not been allowed to enter those nations. Several videos of some of those students, asking for help, have emerged on social media. They have been stuck in freezing temperatures, with limited food and water, and without any help.

The government had identified an alternate train route to help evacuate the students, from Uzhhorod in western Ukraine to Budapest, Hungary’s capital city.

Admitting that the evacuation of Indian students at the border with Poland was “problematic” as thousands of people, including Ukrainians, are using that route, Shringla said on Sunday: “It is not an organised situation, it’s a conflict zone. Many of our people have been there for a long time and they are in a very difficult situation.”

He added, “We fully empathise with them and we have been working round the clock to see what options we can provide. One of the options in the event we cannot make much progress into Poland, we come down to Uzhhorod and from there every two hours there is a train which leaves for Budapest, Hungary… This is an option we are recommending to our people.”