Muristek
New Delhi, February 15
India was among the clutch of countries that asked its citizens to relocate from Ukraine even as tensions lowered in the day after Russian President Vladimir Putin said troops were being partially withdrawn from the border with Ukraine and expressed his readiness for talks with the US and NATO on limits for missile deployment and military transparency.
But apprehensions still lingered as Putin said at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday in Moscow that there had been no constructive response to demands raised by Russia.
The scope for a conflict also remained because Russia's Lower House of Parliament called on Putin to recognise the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (collectively known as the Donbass). Moscow has already distributed passports to the Russian ethnic population in these two bordering provinces and has forces massed just across the border. Putin also expressed concern over the situation in the two breakaway regions of Ukraine as "genocide" but sought a resolution through the Minsk peace process.
Scholz welcomed the partial pullback and felt diplomatic options had not been exhausted. "The diplomatic possibilities are far from being exhausted. That we hear now that some troops have withdrawn is a good sign, we hope more will follow," he said at the press conference with Putin.
In an appreciation of the situation, the Indian Embassy in Kyiv put out a nuanced statement that asked its citizens in non-essential vocations to consider temporarily relocating outside Ukraine in view of uncertainties of the current situation. But it
especially asked the over 20,000 students to leave the country although Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba had earlier this month said that "there are many more complicated and dangerous places across the world compared to Ukraine".
The Embassy has also asked Indians to keep it informed about the status of their presence so that diplomats could reach out to them immediately in the crisis.
It will continue to function formally unlike the US which closed its Embassy and relocated its diplomats to Lviv in western Ukraine after burning classified documents and destroying sensitive equipment. The United Kingdom and Singapore are among other countries that have asked its citizens to leave Ukraine.
Good sign: Germany
"The diplomatic possibilities are far from being exhausted. That we hear now that some troops have withdrawn is a good sign, we hope more will follow," German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at a press meet with Putin.
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