Russia-Ukraine conflict: Indian students cry for urgent rescue

Jaya Krishnan has been holed up with 200 others in the basement of a building in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, with limited food and amid biting cold

An Indian student with her family members after her arrival at the Kochi airport from Ukraine on Sunday.: PTI Photo

Basant Kumar Mohanty   |   TT  |  New Delhi   |  28.02.22  : Jaya Krishnan has been holed up with 200 other Indian medical students in the basement of a building in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, with limited food and amid biting cold, as the ground above them shakes from Russian shelling.

Aousaf Hussain and the 50 other fellow Indians sheltering inside the underground metro station in Kharkiv since midweek fear for their lives every time they step out to buy food and water.

“We need immediate rescue,” Hussain, a student from Kerala enrolled in the Kharkiv National Medical University, told The Telegraph in a WhatsApp message.

Hundreds of Indian students in Ukraine’s cities have taken refuge in metro stations or underground storerooms of houses that are functioning as wartime bunkers. They have been pleading with the Indian embassy to evacuate them before any casualties occur.

Foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla told reporters that some 2,000 Indians had crossed over from Ukraine to Romania or Hungary, and that the Indian government had already evacuated 1,000 of them.

However, crossing into Poland or Slovakia was proving “problematic” for those in Ukraine, he said. He added that India had sought help from the Red Cross to evacuate its nationals from Ukraine, and sent a team to Moldova to facilitate border crossings from areas like Odessa.

Shringla said that 4,000 Indians had left Ukraine before the conflict began while 15,000 had not.

Krishnan, enrolled in the V.N. Karazin Medical University in Kharkiv, suggested that nearly 18,000 of the Indians in Ukraine were medical or engineering students, and most of them were in Kharkiv and Kyiv.

“We are in a bunker and still safe now. The temperature is minus two degrees Celsius. Food stocks are running out,” Krishnan, who is from Aroor near Ernakulam in Kerala, said on WhatsApp.

He said 200 students were holed up in the makeshift bunker. The shelling through Saturday night had knocked out the electricity supply.

“If we are not evacuated immediately, our condition will become precarious,” he said, adding that the embassy had not taken “any step till now”.

“I spoke with them twice. When they ask me about the region and I say Kharkiv, they ask us to stay wherever we are. Everyone will go down mentally and emotionally as time passes,” he said.

Hussain, a student of the Kharkiv National Medical University, wrote: “The situation is very bad. We have to risk our lives to go out for food.”

Muhammad Tabish, enrolled in the Poltava State Medical University in Poltava, said in a video message that no transport was available.

“Every day we hear the siren and go to the basement. We want evacuation before any casualties happen here,” the student from Meerut in Uttar Pradesh said.

Several groups of Keralite students are stranded at the borders of Poland and Slovakia, where they have been refused entry.

Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who has received messages from the students, has sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention and discussed the matter with external affairs minister S. Jaishankar.

Shringla told reporters that India had contacted the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) seeking help in evacuating Indians from conflict areas like Kyiv, Kharkiv, Suma and Odessa.

“Our permanent representative in Geneva has spoken to the president of ICRC. The ICRC is commencing their operation in Ukraine. We have told them to please make sure wherever possible to escort them (Indians) out. We are going to share with them the locations where our communities are centred,” Shringla said.

On the Indian students stranded in Ukraine’s eastern and southeastern cities, he said: “Unfortunately, these areas continue to be live conflict areas. And it is generally deemed unsafe for people to move around freely. We will find suitable evacuation modalities for them too once feasible.”

Shringla said the government had launched a multi-pronged evacuation plan, Operation Ganga, and had issued several advisories before the conflict began.

He said border crossings to Romania and Hungary were possible. “At the exit point to Poland, lakhs of Ukrainians are trying to leave. Certain border crossings are effective and some are problematic…. The one exit point in Poland is problematic,” Shringla said.

He said he had called the envoys of Russia and Ukraine separately and conveyed the government’s concerns about the safety of Indian citizens in Ukraine.

“We have shared the locations where Indian students are concentrated for ensuring their protection. Both the ambassadors did take note of our concerns,” Shringla said.