Ukraine crisis: 8 flights to reach Bucharest today to evacuate around 1800 Indian nationals, says Scindia
Mar 03, 2022
Bucharest [Romania], March 3 : Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Thursday said that eight flights will arrive here in Bucharest (local time) to evacuate around 1800 Indian nationals.
"Today 8 flights will arrive in Bucharest and will take around 1800 citizens to India. Yesterday 6 flights carrying around 1300 citizens left from Bucharest. Now I am going to border point Siret. There are 1000 students in Siret," said Scindia in Romania.
The Union Minister said on Friday four flights will reach Suceava and will evacuate around 1000 students back to India.
"Suceava is a nearby airport to Siret. So two IndiGo flights are coming to Suceava and will take around 450 students back to India. Tomorrow four flights will come to Suceava and will carry 900- 1000 students," he added.
Earlier in the day, Scindia in a tweet said that 3,726 Indians will be brought back home on Thursday by 19 flights from Bucharest, Suceava, Kosice, Budapest, and Rzeszow.
"Under Operation Ganga, 3726 Indians will be brought back home today on eight flights from Bucharest, two flights from Suceava, one flight from Kosice, five flights from Budapest, and three flights from Rzeszow," tweeted Scindia.
Meanwhile, the students who were evacuated from Ukraine and arrived at Delhi airport on Thursday thanked the Indian government for rescuing them.
Notably, the American C-17 Globemasters and IL-76 transport aircraft are the most capable of flying to long distances with around 400 passengers. The C-17 transport aircraft had helped in a big way to evacuate citizens and officials from Kabul when the Taliban captured Afghanistan and forced Americans to exit from there.
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said nine flights took off on Thursday from Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Poland.
A total of 17,000 Indian nationals have left Ukraine since the advisories were issued and flights under Operation Ganga have been increased to facilitate the evacuation of remaining students stranded in Ukraine.
For the past few days, the Prime Minister has been chairing crucial meetings on the issue.
Russian forces launched military operations in Ukraine on February 24, three days after Moscow recognized Ukraine's breakaway regions - Donetsk and Luhansk - as independent entities.