Ukraine War: India Evacuates Students from Sumy as Russian Forces Lay Seize of Kyiv

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, March 8: As the Russian forces lay seize of the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv, India is claimed to have completed evacuation of all its 694 students stranded in Sumy and sent them in 12 buses to Poltava.

The union minister Hardeep Singh Puri told reporters that all the students left Sumy for Poltava in buses. “Last night, I checked with the control room, 694 Indian students were remaining in Sumy. Today, they have all left in buses for Poltava,” Puri said on Tuesday.

Media reports who checked with some of the stranded students also confirmed that the students have actually left Sumy. A medical student at the Sumy University confirmed that buses have arrived and students have started boarding the buses. “We have been told that we will go to Poltava. I am praying that we reach a safe zone and this misery is over,” he said.

The students were shifted as part of evacuation of civilians from Sumy and the town of Irpin near the Ukrainian capital Kyiv through a green corridor to Poltova, a city in central Ukraine. The foreign ministry of Ukraine tweeted a video of the evacuation of Sumy citizens, saying “We call on Russia to agree on other humanitarian corridors in Ukraine. We have already started the evacuation of civilians from Sumy to Poltava, including foreign students,” it said.
Sumy, located near the Russian border and around 350 km east of Ukrainian capital Kyiv, has seen heavy fighting since the invasion. At least 21 civilians, including two children, were killed in a Russian air strike on a residential street in Sumy late on Monday, the regional prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Tuesday. The bodies were recovered by emergency services early on Tuesday in searches that are ongoing, it said.

The students have been waiting for evacuation for days. On Saturday, unable to cope any longer with the bitter cold, depleting food and water supplies, the students shared videos saying they have decided to begin the risky journey to the Russian border 50 km away. But they were dissuaded by the government, which contacted them and asked that they “avoid unnecessary risks”.

The plan to evacuate them had twice failed earlier as the Russians and Ukrainians could not decide on common terms for forming the “humanitarian corridor” and ceasefire to allow the civilians to move out of the war zones. On Sunday Ukraine had rejected a Russian plan for a humanitarian corridor to Russia and Belarus.

Among those evacuated from Sumy also included 20 Indians on work permit and 17 other nationals from Nepal, Pakistan, Tunisia and Bangladesh. Multiple small teams of Indian officials had been rushed to the eastern part of Ukraine to facilitate the Indians, mostly students who had taken shelters in campuses and bunkers. Buses and vehicles were also arranged to ferry the students. The Indian embassy in Kyiv had tweeted late on Sunday that a team of officials has been stationed in Poltava city.

The massive evacuation drive comes day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky over phone. During the conversation, Putin assured the prime minister of cooperation in the evacuation of Indians from the war-hit Sumy. The prime minister had expressed grave concerns about the safety and security of Indian students stuck in the warzones. India carried out the evacuation process despite shelling by the Russian forces in Sumy. In fact, the government last week had urged both Russian and Ukrainian authorities for a ceasefire so that the evacuation process can be carried out without any fear.

Russia agreed for ceasefire for the evacuation of the civilians even though the third round of talks with Ukraine on Monday resulted only in tentative progress but failed to reach a deal on creating “humanitarian corridors.” In a statement made earlier in the day, Russia had said it was ready to halt the ongoing onslaught provided that Ukraine’s meets its list of conditions which included recognising the separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states.

Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs informed that oil depots in Zhytomyr and Cherniakhiv were destroyed as a result of two airstrikes. Ukraine State Emergency Service’s Telegram Channel confirmed a reservoir with a capacity of ten cubic metres caught fire. About twenty people and four units of the State Emergency Services equipment were involved in extinguishing – capacity is yet to be ascertained. Additionally, two half-empty tanks were ignited in the Cherniakhiv. Residents have been evacuated from nearby residential buildings.

Civilians fleeing the Russian invasion in Ukraine left two embattled cities along safe corridors on Tuesday. The Russian onslaught has trapped civilians inside besieged cities that are running low on food, water and medicine amid the biggest ground war in Europe since World War II. Previous attempts to lead civilians to safety have crumbled with renewed attacks. But on Tuesday, video posted by Ukrainian officials showed buses packed with people moving along a snowy road from the eastern city of Sumy and others leaving the besieged southern port of Mariupol. It was not clear how long the effort would last.

The Ukrainian government on Tuesday said the first stage of evacuation from Sumy has begun. “The Ukrainian city of Sumy was given a green corridor, the first stage of evacuation began,” the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine tweeted. Ukrainians boarded buses to flee the besieged eastern city of Sumy on Tuesday, the first evacuation from a Ukrainian city through a humanitarian corridor agreed with Russia after several failed attempts in recent days.

Sumy governor Dmitro Zhivitskiy said in a video statement that the first buses had already departed Sumy for the city of Poltava, further west. He said priority would be given to the disabled, pregnant women and children in orphanages. A short video clip released by presidential advisor Kyrolo Tymoshenko showed a red bus with some civilians on board.

“It has been agreed that the first convoy will start at 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) from the city of Sumy. The convoy will be followed by the local population in personal vehicles,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said in a televised statement.

Residents were also leaving the town of Irpin, a frontline Kyiv suburb where families fled for their lives under fierce bombardment on Sunday. Residents ran with their young children in strollers or cradling babies in arms, while others carried pets and plastic bags of belongings.

Meanwhile, energy giant Shell says it will stop buying Russian oil, natural gas and shut service stations in Russia even as the number of refugees fleeing Ukraine reached two million on Tuesday, according to the United Nations, the fastest exodus Europe has seen since World War II.

“Today the outflow of refugees from Ukraine reaches two million people. Two million,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, wrote on Twitter. The update came as a new effort to evacuate civilians along safe corridors finally got underway Tuesday. The route out of the eastern city of Sumy was one of five promised by the Russians to offer civilians a way to escape the Russian onslaught.

Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, is pressing for all civilians trapped by fighting in Ukraine to be allowed to leave safely. She said Tuesday she is “deeply concerned about civilians trapped in active hostilities in numerous areas.”

Bachelet also told the U.N. Human Rights Council that her office has received reports of pro-Ukrainian activists being arbitrarily detained in areas of eastern Ukraine that have recently come “under the control of armed groups.” She said there have been reports of beatings of people considered pro-Russian in government-controlled areas.

British defence minister Ben Wallace said on Tuesday Britain would support Poland if it decided to provide Ukraine with fighter jets, but warned that doing so might have direct consequences for Poland. ‘I would support the Poles and whatever choice they make,’ Wallace said adding that the United Kingdom could not offer aircraft that the Ukrainians would be able to use.

‘We would protect Poland, we’ll help them with anything that they need,’ he said. ‘Poland will understand that the choices they make will not only directly help Ukraine, which is a good thing, but also may bring them into direct line of fire from countries such as Russia or Belarus.’

The Ukrainian officials claimed that street battles and hand-to-hand combat was going on in Kyiv. Ukrainian servicemen and fleeing residents described ferocious fighting on Kyiv’s north-western edge on Monday that could soon spread to the besieged capital. “There is real street fighting now,” a Ukrainian official said in Irpin. Bursts of automatic gunfire and blasts of exploding shells rang out as he spoke on the 12th day of the Russian invasion. “In some places, there is hand-to-hand combat,” he said.

“There is a huge column — 200 men, 50 light armoured vehicles, several tanks,” he said of the Russian threat. “We are trying to push them out, but I don’t know if we’ll be fully able to do it. The situation is very unstable.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is scheduled to address the British lawmakers via video link in the House of Commons later on Tuesday, the first time a president of another country has addressed the main Westminster chamber. Zelensky, who has spoken to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on several occasions since Russia invaded his country, has made a number of impassioned speeches to Western leaders in the last week, asking for supplies and military support.

Meanwhile, isolation of Russian entities and individuals continued with Australia announcing sanctions on “propagandists.” The US president Joe Biden sent a letter of thanks to South Korean President Moon Jae-in for announcing financial sanctions and export controls against Russia. South Korea began halting transactions with the Russian central bank and immobilising its assets held in the Korean Republic won currency from Tuesday. The country has also stopped transactions with seven other Russian banks and their affiliates.

Some Ukrainian news media citing information the Ukrainian Ground Forces claimed that citizens from U.S, U.K., Sweden, Lithuania, Mexico and India have joined the volunteer military force.  On February 27, Zelensky had appealed, “Anyone who wants to join the defence of Ukraine, Europe and the world can come and fight side by side with the Ukrainians against the Russian war criminals.”