After an agonising wait that lasted days, India was finally able to evacuate close to 700 Indian students from Sumy in northeastern Ukraine. The students were driven in 12-14 buses to Poltava in central Ukraine following a communication by the Ukrainian foreign ministry that a humanitarian corridor to evacuate civilians, including foreign students, from Sumy to Poltava had been agreed on Tuesday.

The government said that the students will be taken to western Ukraine in a special train and that Operation Ganga flights were being arranged to bring them back to India.

MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said, "Happy to inform that we have been able to move out all Indian students from Sumy. They are currently en route to Poltava, from where they will board trains to western Ukraine. Flights under Operation Ganga are being prepared to bring them home."

On Monday morning, hundreds of students of Sumy State University queued up outside their hostels to board buses, arranged by the embassy. 

They were excited that they would finally leave a city where food and water supply has been terribly hit as a fallout of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The girls were asked to board first and the boys were told to wait in hostels for their turn, students said. Around 15 minutes later, the girls were asked to get off the buses and return to their hostels.

“All 700 (Indian) students were there, hoping to leave Sumy by bus. But there were only three buses. The girls were asked to board and we were told to wait for our turn in hostels,” said Sheikh Mohammad Danish, who is from Telangana and is a fourth-year medical student.

The boys returned to their hostels hoping more buses would arrive soon to take them out of Sumy, Danish said.

Several students media spoke to said they were told not to click photographs of the buses for “security reasons”.

“We only knew that the buses would take us to Poltava,” said a student who had boarded the bus but later got off and returned to her hostel.

Poltava is a city in central Ukraine from where it is comparatively easier to move to the western part of the country. Most of the Indians in Ukraine were evacuated through the western border.

Another student who had boarded the bus but had to return to the hostel said she was “too tired to speak” after the roller-coaster of a day.

The students this newspaper spoke to said this was the first time in the last 12 days, after Russia attacked Ukraine, that they saw a "ray of hope”.

(With inputs from agencies)