Students from Kerala stranded in eastern Ukraine amid fast-depleting supplies
Even as Russian forces close in on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and continue to attack locations including Kharkiv, Dnipro, Odessa and Sumy, more than 15,000 Indian students continue to remain stuck in bunkers and metro stations in that country awaiting a safe return home.
“I woke up to the sound of explosion yesterday morning at 5. I thought it might be an airplane, but it was a missile,” says Lakshmi Devi. A third-year student of Kharkiv National Medical University in northeast Ukraine, Devi hails from Kannur in Kerala.
After the attack, the students were asked to leave their apartments or hostels and take shelter at bunkers, basements or metro stations. They braved the night inside a packed subway station even as the temperature dropped to nearly -2 degrees Celsius. The group of nine, including Devi, other students from Kerala and a few Ukrainian nationals, later moved to a bunker with very limited food, water and other facilities.
Students find refuge inside a packed subway station
Holding on to essential supplies while sharing space in the poorly lit bunker, Devi says the group is afraid, but they try to visit their apartments or step out of the congested space occasionally to buy groceries, despite the dangers outside.
“I could hear the last explosion about less than 30 minutes ago. Everyone is panicked to the core. We always hear about war, but we never expected this danger upon ourselves,” she adds.
Union Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan had announced that since the air space in Ukraine is closed, alternative arrangements were being made for the evacuation of Indian nationals. While attempts are on to evacuate students through the neighbouring countries of Poland or Romania, it is little solace for Devi’s group as they fear that it would only work for those in the western part of the nation. Students in eastern Ukraine can’t be evacuated as easily as those in the west because the country shares its border with Russia in the east.
A student stays in a bunker
While back home their families are immersed in fervent prayers, the students worry about losing contact in the event of a network outage or if they are no longer able to charge their phones.
Amid fast-depleting resources, dipping temperature and increasing physical weakness, the students have pleaded with the authorities to make arrangements for their escape from the warfront.
