Ukraine crisis: Not just Indians, Pakistan, Bangladesh & Nepal students rescued too

NEW DELHI: “Hi I’m Asma Shafique from Pakistan and want to thank the Indian embassy of Kyiv for supporting us all the way here as we were stuck in a very difficult situation and I also want to thank the Prime Minister of India for supporting us. Hope we get home safely because of the Indian embassy,” Asma, a Pakistani student at Sumy State Medical College said in a video post on Wednesday after her safe evacuation along with Indians and a few more from other countries.While en route to western Ukraine with fellow batchmates for further evacuation from the country, Asma’s remarks came on the same day that Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina thanked PM Modi for evacuating students of her country along with those from India under “Operation Ganga”.“PM of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina thanks PM Modi for rescuing its 13 nationals from Ukraine under ‘Operation Ganga’. Nepalese, Tunisian students were also rescued under this operation,” government sources said. The 13 Bangladeshi nationals, who had been stuck in northeastern city Sumy, were evacuated along with 694 Indians brought to Poltava city in Ukraine. Two Tunisians and a Nepalese were also among those evacuated by the Indian authorities.Sources said they will be brought back to India along with the other Indian nationals from Poland. On Tuesday, the Indian authorities started evacuating its stranded students from Sumy to Poltava after Russia announced a temporary ceasefire from 10 am providing humanitarian corridors in Kyiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Mariupol.The human corridor in Sumy was announced after Prime Minister Modi spoke to the Presidents of Ukraine and Russia to provide a safe passage to evacuate the remaining Indian students who were stuck in Sumy.According to sources, Prime Minister Modi had asked the relevant officials including the four Union ministers deployed to lead the evacuation exercise to expand the ambit of the evacuation under “Operation Ganga”. “The PM had instructed that anyone from south Asia stuck in the war zone should be evacuated. The exercise witnessed evacuation of two Tunisians also,” a source said.Modi had spoken to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and requested them to provide safe passage to evacuate the remaining Indian nationals stuck in the war-torn country. Roshan Jha , the first Nepali national to have been evacuated from Ukraine by the Indian authorities, had also expressed his gratitude towards the Indian government for its support.