Students are hesitant to step out as civilians roam the streets with guns.
new Delhi:
Hundreds of Indian students stranded at a university in Sumi, a city in north-eastern Ukraine, said they have been asked by the Indian embassy to stay in university hostels and wait for evacuation. Caught between shelling and gunfire, a group of them told NDTV via a video call that 700 to 900 Indian students were waiting to be released without a clue from Sumy State University, located close to the Russian border.
One of them said, “We are not allowed to move out. Supermarkets are out of stock. ATMs have run out of cash. I don’t know how long we will be able to survive like this.” He said the owner of a local pharmaceutical company is providing him basic groceries for a living.
The students appealed to the government, “Before the situation becomes the same in Kharkiv and Kyiv, please evacuate us by any means. We are 40 kilometers away from Russia, so the situation here could be very bad.” The capital Kyiv and Kharkiv have both seen frequent shelling and bombing recently. Horrifying videos from the two big cities show the massive devastation.
Students are hesitant to step out as civilians roam the streets with guns. One of the students told NDTV, “They have orders to shoot if anyone is suspicious.” At the moment they have access to food. However, he said the local mayor had informed him that more troops were stationed in Sumi.
Some students risk going out alone against advice. He said, “A friend of ours left saying that now our life is in our hands. We told him not to leave but he left. He called us later and told us that he had reached the Polish border safely. “
Sumy is a three-hour train ride from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, where Russian forces have reportedly also targeted civilian and administrative buildings. An Indian student was murdered while waiting outside a grocery store in Kharkiv yesterday. Naveen Shekharappa, 21, a final year medical student from Haveri in Karnataka, died when Russian troops blew up a government building on Tuesday.
Students from other countries are also stuck in the university. “They have arranged their own buses and said they can no longer trust their embassies,” said one of the students. When asked why they are not boarding those buses and going to a safer place, he said that he has been advised by the Indian embassy to stay put and not to step out. “We are following the advice of our embassy,” he said.
Of the four students NDTV spoke to, two are from Gujarat, one from Assam and the other from Haryana.
As Russian crackdown intensified in Ukraine’s second largest city, India today urged all its citizens in Kharkiv to leave immediately for their safety. In back-to-back tweets in all caps, the Indian embassy – which had to halt operations in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv yesterday – said that Indians should reach Pesochin, Babe or Bezludovka by 6 pm local time (9.30 pm IST). Walk when needed.