Flight Carrying Students Evacuated From Ukraine's Sumy Lands in Delhi

The Air India flight from Rzeszow, a city in southeastern Poland, arrived in Delhi in the morning, officials said.

Union Minister Anurag Thakur received the students at the airport.

(Photo: screengrab from video shared by @PIB_India/Twitter)

The last group of Indian students who were evacuated from Sumy to Poland finally made it back to India on Friday, 11 March.

An Air India flight from Rzeszow, a city in southeastern Poland, arrived in Delhi in the morning, officials said.

The flight had left Rzeszow at around 11.30 pm (IST) on Thursday, 10 March, and landed in the Indira Gandhi International Airport at 5:45 am on Friday, they added.

Union Minister Anurag Thakur received the students at the airport.

Another flight landed at 8:40 am.

The Long Road Home

On the morning of 8 March, around 600 students from Sumy were moved to Poltava, a city in central Ukraine, in 13 buses, escorted by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

From Poltava, they took a train to Lviv in western Ukraine.

From Lviv, they took another special train to Poland, from where they flew back to India.

The evacuation was carried out under the banner of Operation Ganga.

The situation of the students stranded in their hostels in Sumy was getting more critical by the day.

While speaking to The Quint, they had said that airstrikes had hit the water and electricity plants, disrupting the supply of both the essential commodities.

Factors such as location and weather, constant attacks by Russian forces, and the lack of transportation options, made it difficult for the authorities to get the students out.

During the whole evacuation process, a video shared by certain sections of Indian media on 9 March falsely and prematurely claimed that the rescued students from Sumy had already arrived in Poland when they were still in Ukraine's Lviv.

You can read more about it here.