Ukraine crisis: How is India's evacuation ops better organised than US, China and UK?

Under Operation Ganga, the mission to evacuate the stranded Indians from Ukraine, India has so far brought back over 1,100 citizens from Ukraine.

New Delhi: Russia last week invaded Ukraine by land, air and sea and confirmed the West's worst fears with the biggest attack by one state against another in Europe since World War II. 

Ukraine's health ministry said on Sunday (February 27) that 352 civilians, including 14 children, have been killed since the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Thursday. It also said that 1,684 people, including 116 children, have been wounded so far.

Over the past few weeks, several countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, China and India have been trying to evacuate their nationals from the war-torn country. According to data from Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science, around 80,000 international students study in Ukraine with Indians making up about a quarter of the total foreign students. Students from Morocco, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Nigeria also turn up in large numbers.

UNITED STATES

The US has issued an advisory for its citizens to depart using 'privately available transportation options if it is safe to do so' and have explicitly said that the government will not be able to evacuate them. The US Embassy released an online form on February 22 listing local (Ukraine) and international (US-based) phone numbers for communication. The list includes all the border crossings and phone numbers of embassy people at various borders and specific locations where US citizens can cross. They have encouraged their citizens to enrol in the STEP enrollment for security updates and easy communication in an emergency.