India’s dependencies on Russia in strategic and core sectors of the military, security, energy, science and technology and space are also considerable. In recent decades, India’s relations with the US have also risen exponentially. India has deep strategic partnerships with France, Germany, Britain, the EU and Japan too, all of whom strongly oppose Russia’s actions. It’s a difficult tightrope to walk.Worryingly, more than 600 Indian students remain stranded in Sumy, a city in north-eastern Ukraine, hoping to be evacuated. Not a single Indian student from Sumy State University, near the Russian border, had been evacuated, Viraj Walde from Nagpur told PTI late Wednesday. “The students are terrified. Food and drinking water supplies are depleting. The banks and ATMs are running out of cash,” he informed.The Indian embassy issues advisories, students said, but no personnel are on the ground to help them either en route to border areas or at exit points. Students walking and waiting for days in bitter cold, pushed around and deboarded from trains have found little assistance even as the four ministers and MEA officials wait with flowers to greet them.The disappointing performance of the Indian mission in Ukraine sharply contrasts with earlier evacuations, particularly those before 2014. Even six months ago, when the Taliban captured Kabul, Ambassador Rudrendra Tandon and his team brought back every Indian stranded there.Ambassador M. Manimekalai, as India’s Ambassador to Libya in 2011, travelled to Sirte in the war zone, to evacuate Indians stranded there amid European airstrikes. She personally supervised clearance of over 10,000 travel documents and ensured that 16,000 Indians were evacuated safely. Ambassador Ausaf Sayeed in Yemen and earlier, Ambassador Nengcha Louvhum Mukhopadhyay in Lebanon and Ambassador Suresh Reddy in Iraq, are all stellar examples to emulate.Around 170,000 Indians were evacuated from Kuwait in 1990, with minimal fuss, no cell phones and Air India doing the heavy lifting. All those operations were not publicised PR events. No roses were offered to those returning nor were photo-ops with ministers available on arrival! Most importantly, no Indian died during these huge evacuation operations.All of which could further complicate an already fraught situation. It is unlikely that hostilities between the western democracies and Russia will go away soon, which will continue to test India’s diplomatic abilities.(This was first published in National Herald on Sunday)
Source link
