THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The situation has turned further grim for nearly 700 Indian students, mostly Keralites, in the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy. On Thursday night, there were safety concerns owing to heavy shelling overnight. A day later, it has turned into a struggle for survival due to an acute shortage of food, water and other basic necessities for the students holed up in bunkers adjacent to Sumy State University.
With the power supply disrupted for many hours, the students are concerned that their only source of communication with the outside world will also be cut. Only those who had managed to charge their mobile phones earlier were able to communicate with their parents back home. Some of the girl students are in a state of mental breakdown owing to hours of being huddled inside the bunkers.
“Yesterday, there was a huge blast near our hostel and any moment, we may come under attack. We have run out of food and water. There is no water in the toilets and we are struggling to meet our basic needs,” said Swetha Yadam, a student at the university through a video message to TNIE.
“If the situation continues for long, we have no other choice but to walk through the war front to the Russian border. Staying put here has become equally risky due to the renewed fighting,” said Krishnanand V, a fourth-year medical student at the university. Kerala government’s Officer on Special Duty in New Delhi and former diplomat Venu Rajamony acknowledged that the Indian students in Sumy were in a pitiable condition. “However, we have not yet received any communication from the Union government on the plan of action for their rescue,” Rajamony said.
Stranded near Kharkiv
Meanwhile, nearly 1,000 Indian students who are stationed in Pisochyn, 11 km from Kharkiv, are clueless about the next course of action after rushing to the evacuation point. On Wednesday afternoon, the Indian Embassy had asked its citizens in Kharkiv city to flee to three evacuation points, including Pisochyn, before dusk.
“Though there is no fighting in Pisochyn, there is an acute shortage of food. For the past three days, we have been getting assurances that buses will be arranged to ferry us to the border but we are still stranded here,” said Janaki Krishna, a fifth-year MBBS student of Kharkiv National University. She, along with her classmates, had walked 11 km in the biting cold to reach the evacuation point on Wednesday.
More Keralites arrive from Ukraine
T’Puram: A total of 418 Keralites from Ukraine arrived in the state on Friday, taking the total number of people who have come back to the state since the war broke out, to 1,070. While 360 passengers who landed in Delhi were brought to the state in two chartered flights, 58 people arrived in the state after landing in Mumbai, a Norka official said. The state government had arranged chartered flights from Delhi and Mumbai owing to the increase in the number of Indian nationals being evacuated from Ukraine through the Union government’s special rescue mission ‘Operation Ganga’. All Keralites who landed in Delhi were brought to Kochi. Of the 58 passengers from Mumbai, 22 were sent to Thiruvananthapuram,
27 to Kochi and five to Kozhikode, the official added.
War-torn days
Due to the acute shortage of water, a few students ventured out into the open braving the cold and collecting snow to meet their urgent needs. Most of them are surviving on a single loaf of bread for the whole day and are eagerly awaiting a message from the Indian authorities for their evacuation. With the power supply disrupted for many hours, the students are concerned that their only source of communication with the outside world will be cut.