Around 500 Indian students stranded in Sumy, a town in eastern Ukraine, have appealed that they should be evacuated through the Russian border which will entail a travel time of only two hours for them.
While the current Indian evacuation efforts focuses on western Ukraine, these students are of the view that they cannot undertake the 1,200 km journey to the western border, which takes over 20 hours, as railway tracks have been damaged and many road bridges have been blown up in the ongoing conflict. Besides, there are several landmines that have been placed en route, they fear.
"It is practically impossible and very dangerous for us to travel to the western border of Ukraine," Anju Tojo, a final year student of Sumy Medical University said on NDTV.
"The only option is to evacuate us to the Russian border. So I request the Indian embassy in Moscow to get us evacuated," she added.
The majority of the students are studying in Sumy State Medical University. Sumy is around 200 km east of Kharkiv, which came under heavy shelling yesterday.
While India has planned to operate 26 flights to evacuate citizens over the next three days, all of these will take off from countries like Romania and Poland which share borders with Ukraine in the west.
However, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla yesterday said, "We remain very concerned over the situation in Kharkiv, Sumy and other conflict zones in Ukraine".
"Earlier this afternoon, I separately called in the Ambassadors of Russia and Ukraine. I strongly reiterated our demand for urgent safe passage for all Indian nationals who are still in Kharkiv and other cities in the conflict area," Mr Shringla added.
