MANGALURU: With the Russia-Ukraine war intensifying, some students from Dakshina Kannada are desperate to head back home. Many students, along with Ukrainian citizens, who were taking shelter at metro stations in Kharkiv and Kyiv, were able to travel to railway stations through buses.
Anaina Anna, who was at a metro station in Kharkiv, had no idea till Tuesday evening whether she would get out. “They are using vacuum bombs now and there was no response from the embassy. So I decided to leave Kharkiv and when I asked the agent to return my passport, he refused. They had taken the passport for visa purposes and the agent kept it with him and told me that he would return it during evacuation.
Today, when I contacted him, he asked me to go to his office and collect it when there was heavy bombing on the streets as he was scared to step out. I asked him whether I could send someone else to collect it, but he refused,” she said.
Anaina left by train to Lviv without her passport. “I think I may get a temporary passport. Around 100 people, including a few Indian students, left from the shelter for Lviv by train without their passports, from where we will be landing in Hungary,” she said.
Meanwhile, Claton (19), a resident of Padil, left for Lviv from Kyiv by a flight along with other students, and from there to Uzhhorod. His mother Olin Lasrado narrated the tense situation her son was in while taking shelter in a bunker.
“He stayed in the bunker from February 24 to 28. He could not venture out even to go to the washroom or for food for almost 14 hours. The boys had to prepare food during the curfew. They were asked to stay awake and be alert in the bunker. Early of Monday, all of a sudden, they were asked to get ready with minimum clothes and available canned food and left for the railway station in buses,” she said.
Meanwhile, she got information around 7.15 pm on Tuesday that Claton reached Uzhhorod. Of the six Udupi students who are stranded in Ukraine, two are in bunkers, while the others have managed to reach different border checkpoints.