Russia Invades Ukraine: Karnataka Appoints Nodal Officer To Facilitate Safe Movement of Stranded People

Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai had said about 100 Indian students, who were on their way to the airport in two buses, are stranded in Ukraine. Nearly 10 of them were from Karnataka.

Bengaluru: The Karnataka government has appointed a nodal officer to facilitate evacuation and smooth movement of people from the State stranded in the trouble-hit Ukraine to their respective places. Senior IFS officer and Commissioner for Karnataka State Disaster Management Authority, Dr. Manoj Rajan will be coordinating with Ministry of External Affairs, Indian Embassy in Kyiv and provide all necessary support for evacuation of Indians stranded in Ukraine.

“Dr Manoj Rajan, Commissioner, Karnataka State Disaster Management Authority, Revenue Department, will coordinate with the Ministry of External Affairs and Embassy of India, Kyiv, and provide all necessary support for evacuation of stranded people from the state to the respective destination,” a government notification said.

The nodal officer will oversee functioning of the 24×7 helpline number (080-1070, 080-22340676) and email- manoarya@gmail.com and revenuedmkar@gmail.com) in the state emergency operation centre.

Earlier in the day, Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai had said about 100 Indian students, who were on their way to the airport in two buses, are stranded in Ukraine. Nearly 10 of them were from Karnataka, he said.

Russia on February 24 ordered military operations in Ukraine, following which several explosions rocked many Ukrainian cities. Explosions were reported in the capital city Kyiv, surrounding cities like Mykolaiv, Odessa, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia. Also, regions like Bila Tserkva, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Kropyvnytskyi, Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro, Berdyans’k, Kharkiv, Poltava, Sumy, Vinnytsia, Lutsk, Ivano Frankivsk, Zhytomyr were also under attack. Hundreds of Ukrainian service members and civilians are believed to have been killed in these explosions.

Announcing a special military operation in Ukraine earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin had said that the motive behind it was not to ‘capture ‘the Eastern European country but just to ‘demilitarize’. Urging the Ukrainian troops in Donbass to give up their weapons and ‘go home’, Putin had said that the fight between Russian and Ukrainian soldiers was ‘inevitable’.