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A special Indigo flight, carrying 229 Indian nationals from Ukraine, reached Delhi on Saturday morning. The flight took from Suceava in Romania. Yesterday, the airline said that it would operate 12 evacuation flights with over 2,600 Indians from war-torn Ukraine between Friday and Sunday (March 4-6). India has been evacuating its citizens through special flights from Ukraine's western neighbours such as Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland as the Ukrainian airspace has been shut since February 24 due to a Russian military offensive.
Previously, IndiGo announced that as many as 42 evacuation flights with 9,200 Indians had been scheduled to operate between February 28 and March 6.
IndiGo's flights are operating to India from Bucharest and Suceava in Romania, Budapest in Hungry, Rzeszow, and Warsaw in Poland, and Kosice in Slovakia.
Thousands of Indian nationals are being brought back from Ukraine under Operation Ganga. According to a statement by the foreign ministry, over 10,300 Indian nationals were brought back in 48 flights under evacuation mission 'Operation Ganga' so far. However, still, 2,000-3,000 are stuck in the war-torn region. Of which 300 Indians are stranded in Kharkiv and 700 in Sumy.
Arindam Bagchi, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), said India has not seen any movement after it emerged that Russia and Ukraine on Thursday agreed to the need for the creation of humanitarian corridors to help civilians leave the conflict zones.
Bagchi said around 20,000 Indians have left Ukraine's borders since India issued its first travel advisories in mid-February. He suggested that it has now emerged that the total number of Indians in Ukraine was more than the 20,000 citizens who had registered with the embassy in Kyiv.
He said 15 flights landed in India as part of the evacuation mission during the last 24 hours, bringing back more than 3,000 nationals.
The spokesperson said 16 flights are scheduled for the next 24 hours.
