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Around 17,000 Indian nationals have left war-torn Ukraine through its different borders since the Indian Embassy in Ukraine issued advisories, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Wednesday.
Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said, "We now estimate that nearly 17,000 Indian nationals have left Ukraine borders since our advisories were issued in the last week of January." He further said that the Embassy in Kiev has been asked to set up a temporary office in Lviv to facilitate border crossing by Indian nationals. Bagchi said that a mechanism has been established for issuing emergency certificates to those who lost their Indian passports, which will help many Indian students. The MEA spokesperson said that "substantial segment of our Embassy team is now at Lviv for this purpose". "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," Bagchi said. He also expressed deep condolences over the death of Chandan Jindal, an Indian student from Barnala in Punjab, who died in Ukraine of natural causes. Bagchi added that an advisory has been issued by the Indian Embassy urging Indian nationals to leave Kharkiv by 6 p.m. local time based on "information from Russia", adding that they should take any method to leave, including "on foot". "We have issued this advisory based on inputs from the Russian side. We haven't chosen the time. We haven't chosen the location," he said. --IANS sk/arm ( 270 Words) 2022-03-02-21:16:05 (IANS)
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