Around 17,000 Indian nationals have left Ukraine: MEA

New Delhi, March 2 (SocialNews.XYZ) Around 17,000 Indian nationals have left war-torn Ukraine's borders since the Indian Embassy in Ukraine issued advisory, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Wednesday.

"We now estimate that nearly 17,000 Indian nationals have left Ukraine's borders since our advisories were issued in the last week," MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said.

He said that the Embassy in Kiev has been asked to set up a temporary office in Lviv to facilitate border crossing by Indian nationals.

He also said that a mechanism has been established for issuing emergency certificates to those who lost their Indian passports which will also help many Indian students.

The MEA spokesperson said that "substantial segment of our embassy team is now at Lviv for this purpose. Location of the other segment of the embassy team is dynamic".

"We are exploring options to reach eastern Ukraine to assist the evacuation of citizens who are stuck there. We are seeing if our teams can reach there, it's not easy because the route is not open all the time," he said.

He expressed deep condolences for death of Chandan Jindal who died of natural causes.

About urgent evacuation, Bagchi said that advisory issued by the Indian Embassy for nationals to leave Kharkiv by 6 p.m. local time was given on "basis of information from Russia". He added that they should take any method to leave, including "on foot".

"We have issued this advisory based on inputs from Russian side. We haven't chosen the time. We haven't chosen the location," he said.

Source: IANS