In a significant development, India is deploying its Russian-origin Ilyushin-76 heavy-lift transport aircraft to Russia to bring back Indian citizens returning from Ukraine under Operation Ganga.
Sources in the government said that the Air Force is taking all precautions and not sending its American-origin C-17 aircraft and would instead deploy the Russian-origin Ilyushin-76 for the evacuation mission from Russia.
"Indian Air Force is deploying Russian-origin Ilyushin-76 heavy-lift transport aircraft to Russia to bring back Indian citizens returning from Ukraine. India is not deploying American-origin C-17 planes for the mission," Government sources told ANI.
The Il-76 is expected to get clearance for take off shortly, the sources said.
The sources said that a number of Indian students from Ukraine are moving into the Russian territory from the Ukrainian side with assistance from the Indian government.
In the ongoing war in Ukraine, Russia and America are on different sides and there is a possibility that Russians may not like the presence of American origin planes in their airspace.
India has, so far, deployed only C-17s and commercial planes to bring back citizens from Poland, Romania and Hungary to evacuate citizens returning from there.
( With inputs from ANI )
Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor