Around 30 students hailing from Karnataka safely evacuated from Ukraine

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Bengaluru, Feb 27, 2022: The Karnataka government on Sunday said around 30 students hailing from the state have been safely evacuated from war-torn Ukraine. The first batch of 12 students reached Bengaluru International Airport from Mumbai at 8.40 am today.

Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Coal and Mines Pralhad Joshi, state Revenue Minister R Ashoka and nodal officer Rajan received the arriving students at the airport.

Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai has said that his government will provide all help to students arriving from Ukraine to reach their homes in various parts of the state after landing in Mumbai and Delhi. Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Bommai said that the state’s principal resident commissioner in the national capital had been instructed to make arrangements for food and accommodation for the students. “We have also sent a list of our students to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar after I spoke to him about the issue. It has been decided to bring those stranded in the western part of Ukraine by road. Accordingly, many students are arriving through Romania. Their details are being collected.”

Manoj Rajan, Commissioner, Karnataka State Disaster Management Authority (KSDMA) who has been appointed nodal officer to facilitate the safe return of stranded people and students from Karnataka in Ukraine to their respective places, said that arrangements are being made to help the students who have landed in Mumbai to take the earliest available flight to Bengaluru. From Bengaluru, they will head to their hometowns.

“The situation is horrifying and everyone is scared and clueless of what is happening. I was informed only 45 minutes before evacuation from Ukraine,” said Tushar Madhu, a Bengaluru native and student of medicine in the east European country, who reached Karnataka on Sunday.

Tushar was in Chernivtsi, a city in western Ukraine, and is a third-year student. Speaking to The Indian Express minutes after he landed in Bengaluru, he expressed a sense of relief. “It all started on February 24; around 4.30 am we started getting news that the Ukraine is under attack and bombings were happening. There was a lot of chaos and panic buying. We did not know what to do. Our only hope was that Romania’s border is just 37 km from Chernivtsi and it helped us to exit Ukraine.”

Located 530 km from the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, Chernivtsi has witnessed multiple bombings. Tushar says the closest their group came to the bombing was in Lviv.

Revealing that this was the second time he was being airlifted from the country, Tushar said the first time it was due to Covid. “In 2020, when Covid-19 broke out, I was airlifted under the Vande Bharat Mission, but this was the scariest journey. On February 26, just 45 minutes before evacuation, we were informed to pack our luggage and we left. It took a lot of time to travel 37 km as vehicles were stuck at the border. However, the local police helped us to cross the border. We were then airlifted from Bucharest to Mumbai and to Bengaluru,” he said.

The first batch of 12 students arrived in Karnataka via Mumbai and reached Bengaluru International Airport at 8.40 am on Sunday. The second batch of 13 students and a third batch of five from the state have reached Delhi and will arrive in Bengaluru on Sunday night. They have been accommodated in Karnataka Bhavan.