TIRUPATI: From being pepper-sprayed by the Ukrainian security forces to surviving on just soup and biscuits for days, Sagarika Chowdary from Tirupati has been through extreme difficulties in her effort to return home from the war-torn Eastern European country.
Sagarika, a fourth-year MBBS student at the Ivan Franko National University in Lviv, said: “Several students were unnerved when the police there did not let them cross the Ukrainian-Slovakian border even after waiting for more than 48 hours. And when we argued with the police they used pepper spray to disperse the crowd.”
“The police only allowed Ukrainian women and children to cross the border.”
She added people were gathered in serpentine queues trying to cross the border to Slovakia.
Sagarika left Lviv with other Indian students on February 27 and reached the border in cabs after the Russian forces bombed the local airport.
“It took us 12 hours to reach the border, which is otherwise a five-hour journey, due to traffic jams as many people in vehicles were lined up wanting to cross the borders,” she told TNIE.
She narrated that initially only 80 students were let into Slovakia, and her group had to wait for 48 hours before it was allowed to go through the border.
“If not for my MBBS degree, I would never go back to Ukraine after going through a harrowing time in the last couple of weeks.”