Ex-Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha alleges govt's ambivalent attitude towards Ukraine crisis

Yashwant Sinha, who served as the Foreign Minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government, has accused the present government of being indecisive in making a decision to evacuate Indian students and nationals from Ukraine which is under military assault from Russia.

Sinha has said that during the Gulf War in 1990 over 1 lakh 70 thousand people were successfully evacuated and compared to that the current number of students, ie, 18,000 is not that huge.

"Though elections are still taking place in UP, it will be the height of tragedy to use this occasion to propagate that the government of India has done a fantastic job,” Sinha said adding that PM Modi said this in the election rallies in UP is not a very good thing and it is the duty of government to do this.

He accused the government of being aware of the ground realities however they sat idle and didn’t’ do anything. He said that the government should have evacuated every citizen when the airspace was open and flying was happening.

He added, "Even after the airspace closed, our embassy in Ukraine should have made arrangements to have the students leave by bus or whatever transport available as soon as possible to neighbouring countries.”

He said that happened because the government adopted a very careless attitude towards the problem. "I'm told by informed sources that this is because of the government's ambivalent attitude towards the crisis adopted,” Sinha said.