Though the majority of Indian students from Kharkiv, Ukraine, have made it to either Hungary or Slovakia, through Lviv, they are worried that their friends who moved to Pisochyn, besides those in Sumy, are stuck. there
Hundreds of students from the border city braved odds such as hostile Ukrainian soldiers to get out of the warzone a week after the battle began and they were forced to take shelter in bunkers and underground train stations.
“We were pushed aside and sometimes beaten up when we tried to board the train from Kharkiv. That we were much ahead in the queue did not matter. We waited for a whole day at the railway station hungry and cold before we could board a train to Lviv,” says Ansalna Azeez, a student of Kharkiv National Medical University hailing from Idukki. She was part of a large group that reached Budapest, Hungary, on Saturday.
Musafir Mohammed Ali, a sixth year student of VN.Karazin National Medical University in Kharkiv, too has reached Hungary. He is worried about his friends in Sumy, where rail and road connectivity has been disrupted in shelling. “There are around 700 Indian students in Sumy and they cannot get out without any sort of official help,” he says. Musafir, along with around 40 of his friends from Kaharkiv, boarded a flight to India on Saturday.
Despite the efforts made by the Government of India in arranging humanitarian corridors and transportation of students from neighbouring countries, there is widespread discontent among students who made it past the borders.
They allege that the Indian embassy in Ukraine was not much of a help. “We fought to get into trains. We arranged vehicles for our transportation to the borders. We walked kilometres. We did it all by ourselves. Nobody can claim the credit for what we did. We had help from the embassy only after we crossed the border,” Nihal, another student from Kharkiv, who boarded a flight back home from Slovakia on Saturday said.
“There are around 400 people in Pisochyn. They had moved there based on the directives from the embassy. But they could not get out of there,” Nihal added.
