Reportedly more than 700 Indian students are trapped in Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, about 60 km from the Russian borders. Evacuation efforts have been put on hold because of shellings and the disputes between Kyiv and Moscow on the routes of evacuations. Reacting to the news, Bollywood actress Sonam Kapoor took to Instagram to call out 'racism' against the Indian students. She said it is 'disgusting' the way people of colour are treated.
"Indians are facing racism from both sides of the fight. It's disgusting the way coloured people have been treated. At least that's what the stories coming out in the news are reiterating,” she wrote in her Instagram Story.
Sonam Kapoor
Meanwhile, India has regretted that despite appeals to Russia and Ukraine, a safe corridor has not been set up for students trapped in the Ukrainian city of Sumy, while 20,000 other Indians have been evacuated on more than 80 flights.
About half the people sleeping in underground shelters without food, water, power and heating in Mariupol were supposed to be evacuated on Sunday, but the ceasefire arrangement collapsed.
Till Sunday afternoon, India had operated 63 flights under Operation Ganga, bringing back approximately 13,300 people since hostilities broke out between the two countries.
From Sunday night till Monday evening, 13 more flights have been scheduled - including one by an Indian Air Force C-17 aircraft - from Kosice, Rzeszow, Bucharest and Budapest.
According to India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), since India's first advisory last month, more than 21,000 of its citizens have moved out of Ukraine, 4,000 of them before the start of the Russian military operation on February 24.
Not many Indians are left in Ukraine now, except for Sumy in the eastern part of the country which is witnessing some intense fighting.
Buses organised by the Indian embassy have been bringing the Indian students out of Pisochyn in the Kharkiv area to the Polish and Romanian border from Lviv.
The main focus, the MEA says, is now on Sumy in the northeast on the border with Russia as the Indian authorities continue to explore multiple options for evacuating its citizens out of there.
-- with IANS inputs
