The country's largest low-cost carrier IndiGo is operating two evacuation flights to bring back stranded Indians from Ukraine amid ongoing Russian military operations, the airline said in a statement on Monday.
“IndiGo is operating two evacuation flights using A321 aircraft to bring back Indians safely. These flights are being operated from Delhi to Bucharest, Romania and Budapest, Hungary via Istanbul, today as part of the government of India’s Operation Ganga mission," said Indigo.
Further, it added that the airline is closely liaising with the government to offer its support for more such flights.
This comes as the sixth flight carrying 240 stranded Indian nationals departed from Hungary's Budapest for Delhi earlier in the day.
Meanwhile, reports suggest that India plans to send four senior ministers to Ukraine's border nations to help in the rescue of thousands of its citizens.
Ministers Hardeep Puri, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Kiren Rijiju and VK Singh will travel to neighbouring countries of Ukraine to coordinate the evacuation, according to a government source.
Scindia will take care of evacuation efforts from Romania and Moldova while Rijiju will go to Slovakia.
The sources said that Puri will go to Hungary while Singh will be in Poland.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi met senior officials on Monday to discuss evacuation efforts, amid rising concerns back home about the safety of some 16,000 Indians still in Ukraine, most of them students.
Indians make up about a quarter of the 76,000 foreign students studying in Ukraine, mainly on medical courses, according to official estimates.
Late on Sunday night, India's embassy in Poland issued an advisory, saying it had arranged for buses at the Shehyni border in Ukraine, for those stranded there, to cross over into Poland.
The union government has launched Operation Ganga to bring back stranded students and Indian citizens from the conflict-torn Ukraine.
Further, the Indian embassy in Ukraine has informed that the weekend curfew has been lifted in Kyiv. The embassy said that Ukraine Railways is putting special trains for evacuations and advised all students to make their way to the railway station for a journey to the western parts.
