KURNOOL/VISAKHAPATNAM: Some parents heaved a sigh of relief after speaking to their children, who reached Ukraine’s borders and were being looked after by Indian officials on Wednesday, for the first time in days. Out of the 29 identified youngsters from Kurnool district who were studying MBBS in Ukraine, four have been brought back home, so far. Many others are set to board a number of ‘Operation Ganga’ flights in the days to come. B Lakshmanna from Adoni town, whose son Arun Kumar is a second-year MBBS student at Zaporizhzhia University, said he was relieved after hearing his son’s voice on Wednesday morning.
“Arun has now left Ukraine and is under the care of Indian officials at the Ukraine-Hungary border. We weren’t able to contact him for the past three days as he was hiding in his hostel bunker where there was no phone signal. My family is very eagerly waiting for him to come home.” Madhava Swamy of Ramallkota village in Veldurthi mandal said his son Manohar, a student in Kyiv, has reached the area bordering Poland.
Hoping for his son’s return in 48 hours, Madhava said Indian officials at the border were taking care of Indians and making arrangements to bring them home at the earliest. Similarly, Narendra Kumar Bhupal Kandregula of Munagapaka (Visakhapatnam) contacted his brother after reaching Polish-Ukrainian border on Wednesday.
Narendra, a medicine student at National Pirogov Memorial Medical University, Vinnytsya, had been trying to reach the border for the past few days with 14 fellow Indian students. He had fled Vinnytsya after Russia intensified its attack on Kyiv.
“After frantic efforts for the last three days, I was able to reach out to one of Narendra’s friends in the group of 15. He said they were safe, but were still stuck on the Ukraine side of the border to Poland. A large number of people are gathered at the border, hoping for evacuation, which is why it is taking more time than anticipated. My brother Narendra is with Santosh from Srikakulam and Dileep from Manipal,” Chaitanya Charan said.
Chaitanya added that he doesn’t know how the group is managing to eat, but hoped that Narendra wouldn’t be facing many troubles since he had sufficient money. Narendra and his friends took almost three days to cover 350 km from Vinnytsia to reach Lviv. They reached the Poland border on Sunday evening.