Its streets are strewn with bodies and heavy shelling has left craters on roads.
Indian students stranded in Kharkiv, on Ukraine’s border with Russia and among the first cities to come under attack after Russian invasion last week, say intense fighting in the city is making their escape difficult and rising incidents of looting have left them feeling even more unsafe. They urge the government to make it their priority to rescue those in cities that are under attack.
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry advisor Anton Herashchenko on Monday said dozens were killed in mass shelling in Kharkiv and a video on social media showed “cluster munition” hitting a residential area in the city.
Tushar Arya, a student of the V.N. Karazina Kharkiv National University, was a witness to these violent scenes as he made a brave effort to reach the main train station to flee the city.
“There were bodies on the road and bomb blasts had left craters behind,” he told The Hindu in a telephonic conversation. In the melee at the station his phone got disconnected, but he messaged later to say he was ‘lucky’ to find a train and was on his way to Kyiv.
“I left without food and water, with just my passport. Now, my only hope is that the west [western Ukraine] will be safe,” he wrote in his WhatsApp message.
“I was lucky to escape, but my friends are stuck and Russians are killing civilians,” he feared. Hundreds of Ukrainians have registered en masse to fight the Russian army and they are doing so in plain clothes and not military camouflage.
The Indian Embassy in Ukraine has advised students in “active areas of conflict” to travel to the western border of Ukraine through railways. The government of India’s evacuation efforts are focused on some check points on Ukraine’s border with countries like Romania and Hungary. But for many in cities like Kharkiv that have seen intense fighting for the past five days, reaching the western border is proving to be difficult.
Several students The Hindu spoke to said there were three main Universities in Kharkiv where Indian students study and they estimated there were at least “2,000 to 3,000” of them in total.
Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Arindam Bagchi on Monday told mediapersons that the government didn’t have the exact number of students stranded in Kharkiv.
“We have only 12 litres of drinking water left with us and we may also run out of food in another two days. We can’t go to grocery stores as there are tanks moving all over the city,” 20-year-old Pradyuman Singh Shekhawat, who is a first-year student at the National Medical University in Kharkiv said. He is sheltered in a bunker under his hostel with another “50-70” people.
“Everyone is trying to flee and the train station is over-crowded. We are nearly 700 Indian students in my university and it will be impossible for all of us to board the train even if we get there alive by walking nearly 10- 12 km,” said Mr. Shekhawat.
“The government should prioritise red zones such as Kharkiv, Kyiv and Sumy for evacuation. The nearest airport at Belgorod in Russia is just 100 km away from where we can fly directly to India. India is a friend of Russia, then why can’t it talk to the Russian government to evacuate us rather than expect us to travel 1,200 km amidst heavy shelling. The Russian border is also only 43 km from here,” the 20-year-old said.
The airspace over Belgorod and some other western cities of Russia is closed for civilian flights and so is the entire airspace over Ukraine.
Saurabh Chaudhary, also a student at the VN Karazina K N Medical University in Kharkiv, was able to step out to purchase some groceries and said, “Bread is getting costlier. Earlier we used to pay 10 hryvnia for a loaf of bread, but now it costs 50 or 100 hryvnia. There are also rising incidents of loot as people are running out of food. How can we feel safe?”.
