Bhubaneswar: A flight with 219 Indian students, who crossed over to Romania from war-torn Ukraine, will arrive in Mumbai at 9 pm on Saturday. The flight took off from Bucharest airport at 2.45 pm.
Another batch of students will soon board an AI flight from Budapest airport in Hungary, which they entered from the Ukrainian side at the Zahony crossing.
While the Odisha government has announced to bear the expenses for bringing back students and workers of Odisha stuck in Ukraine following the Russian attack on that country, it does not have the actual number of students, pursuing different courses there.
A senior official from the Higher Education department told TNIE that they have so far been able to collect information about 1,200 students being stranded in Ukraine. The state is struggling to get the number right since there is no unified portal where students can be registered prior to their overseas travel.
A report published in HT quoted the Resident commissioner of Odisha in New Delhi, Ravi Kant, as saying that 325 students of Odisha stranded in Ukraine had reached out to his office through a special number issued for the purpose. “Our office also managed to reach quite a few of them. However, we don’t have any information about any workers from the state stuck in Ukraine,” he said, adding that most of these students are pursuing MBBS in the National Medical University of Kharkiv and Kyiv Medical University.
According to media reports, around 100 students from the state were huddled in subways, metros, bunkers and pavements in Kyiv since Thursday, when Russia launched the military operation. While food and water were scarce, with ATMs out of cash, they also had no money.
In Rourkela, around 25 families have been spending sleepless nights, praying for the safe return of their children. Students from Ganjam, Puri, Mayurbhanj, Jagatsinghpur, Jharsuguda districts, among others, were stuck in the country under Russian attack.
Lok Sabha MP from Bargarh, Suresh Pujari has also tweeted about two dozens of students being stranded at Metro Studentska, Kharkiv, Ukraine with no food and no ATMs working.
According to the Ministry of External Affairs, 9,600 students from Odisha have travelled abroad for education in the last five years.
Check updated coordinates of MEA teams assisting Indian nationals in Ukraine:
