New Delhi: Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said that 694 Indian students have been evacuated to Poltava, Ukraine, after being stranded in Sumy.
Mr Puri said there were 694 Indian students at Sumy as of yesterday night; today, all of them have left for Poltava.
The Press Trust of India reports that medical students at Sumy University have already boarded the buses and buses are already arriving.
PTI reports that he said, "we are being sent to Poltava and I am praying that this misery will end when we get there.
Following an evacuation of civilians from Sumy and Irpin near Kyiv, the students were relocated to the central Ukrainian city of Poltava.
Several people, including two children, were killed in an airstrike in Sumy today, located near the Russian border and around 350 kilometres east of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. Since the invasion, the city has seen heavy fighting.
When days went by without the evacuation, the students uploaded videos saying they were hiking 50 kilometres to the Russian border, unable to cope with the bitter cold and running out of supplies.
In response, the government contacted them and asked them to "avoid unnecessary risks".
As part of efforts to resolve the stalled evacuation of Indian students from Sumy, Narendra Modi held meetings with President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.