Russia Ukraine Crisis Live: As Russian forces started moving in towards the Ukrainian capital from all side, two large explosions were heard south of Kyiv in Vasiliy early on Sunday, according to news agency Reuters. As Russia’s aggression moved to the streets of multiple Ukrainian cities, the Russian Ministry of Defense said its troops have been ordered to resume their offensive “in all directions”. This comes after Ukraine’s outgunned forces held the capital for the third day on Saturday as the war continued across the country. A defiant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told citizens to defend the nation as he himself refused to leave Kyiv. Meanwhile, evacuation of Indians stranded in Ukraine, mostly students, continued as 219 people got off from the first flight that flew them home from Bucharest in Romania. Union Minister Push Goal, who was at the Mumbai airport to receive those evacuated, said:
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250 passengers, mostly from Chernivtsi in Western Ukraine, breathed a sigh of relief after they were reunited with their families back in India. A flight from Bucharest carrying them landed in Delhi at around 3 am on Sunday. Chernivtsi is about 40 km from Ukraine’s border with Romania, said Shivam Son, a student at the Ukrainian State Medical University. A majority of the passengers on the flight were from the same university, Son, who is a resident of Delhi, added.
Anna Mansoori, who is a first-year student at the same institute, while explaining their ordeal, said Chernivtsi was mostly safe. We went to Kyiv to take the flight on February 24. However, on the way, we got an email that said that the flight would be cancelled. We waited at the Kyiv railway station for a long time, trying to get through to the Indian Embassy for help. But we had to head back to Chernivtsi, and the journey that usually takes around 8 hours, took us a day. There were traffic jams…tanks, guns, and the military everywhere in Kyiv. Residents of the city were on the roads, carrying their luggage, trying to leave,
she said.
An Air India flight was scheduled to depart from Kyiv to Delhi on February 24, but was cancelled when the Ukrainian airspace was closed for civilian flights. Students who tried to reach the airport either came back to their hostels, or were stuck in bunkers in Kyiv, said Flak An sari, another first year-student at the university. The university then divided us into batches, and we were sent home. Buses were arranged from the hostel to the border. At the hostel, all our luggage was stuffed into a single room,
We have now been receiving messages from the university group saying that people are not able to cross over to Romania. There are long traffic jams all the way to the border. We had to walk around 4 to 5 km to the border, after the bus dropped us off, Flak added.
There weren’t too many problems. On the way to the border, there was a lot of traffic, since many people were trying to cross over to Romania, said AHIMA, who hails from Haryana.
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