Indian students recall the ghastly events they had witnessed in Ukraine, it was nothing short of a miracle when they got evacuated. When they were stranded in the battered region of Sumy – the north-eastern part of Ukraine.
On Friday morning, one among the survivors Dheeraj Kumar who was pursuing medicine at the Sumy State University recalled, “we were absolutely clueless as to where the safe shelters were, the embassy announced Operation Ganga was deployed and the Indian Air Force were on their way to evacuate us. It’s a miracle that we are back alive from the beleaguered Sumy region. I was very happy to have met my parents at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi.” His parents came all the way from Himachal Pradesh to receive him.
Students revealed to the PTI reports, “We have gone through hell, we heard ground shattering air offensives, we saw military tanks from afar unleashes attacks, how we survived 13 days of horror in Ukraine is nothing short of a miracle.”
Indian students thanked the relentless support of the Indian government and the respective embassies in Ukraine and Poland for safely evacuating them and landing in India.
Kumar stated, “ Our government never left us and continued to evacuate us and bring us back to India safely. We crossed miles and miles of distance to reach our safe havens and we went through the horrors of the Russo-Ukraine war in the Sumy region for 2 weeks.”
Another medical student named Mahima Rathi hails from Muzaffarnagar in UP, further added, “In the first attempt we couldn’t be evacuated, as there was heavy shelling, gunfire’s, bombs in Ukraine. It was in the second attempt we were successfully evacuated from the Sumy region. The siren was the most nerve-racking thing we heard in ages, only read in social textbooks, we hid in the bunker when the siren blew and we were terrified, can’t make noise, and suffered silently. We are proud of our country and we are very lucky to have safely returned to India.”
Just this Friday morning close to 240 students were safely evacuated from Poland’s Rzeszow region by an Air India flight. It took off from the region of Rzeszow at IST 11.30 pm on Thursday and reached Delhi at 5.45 am Local time on Friday. Indian Government has so far sent 3 flights to Poland to evacuate close to 600 students from the Sumy region. Another flight landed around 8.40 am today at Delhi.
India’s Operation Ganga proved to be successful in evacuating Indian nationals and students from war-torn Ukraine and this operation began on Tuesday morning.
