Shubhanshu, an Indian student who came from Ukraine, with his mother in Delhi
new Delhi:
A mother and her son hug each other after exiting the arrival terminal at Delhi airport. The teenager, Shubhanshu, had arrived in an evacuation flight from conflict-hit Ukraine.
“It was like hell,” the student told NDTV outside the Delhi airport, the day an Indian student lost his life when Russian troops blew up a Ukrainian government building in Kharkiv, the eastern European country’s second largest city.
Shubhanshu described the long journey of himself and hundreds of Indian students to reach the Romanian border and the difficulties they faced as they desperately tried to move from Ukraine to neighboring countries from where they would be brought to India.
“We traveled from Vinnitsa to the border. The journey was uneventful. Our contractors arranged buses. We reached the border safely, although we had to walk about 12 km. But there was no problem with walking. The problem was the Romanian border. This border crossing had become impossible,” Shubhanshu told NDTV.
Vinnytsia is 270 km from the capital Kyiv, where Russian and Ukrainian armies are engaged in street fighting.
“The students were crying, I looked up, and were begging to be allowed to cross the border. Some fainted, fell at their feet. Some students started fighting among themselves, ‘Let me go first, Let me go first.’
“Some of the students were hit with rifle stock… The situation had gotten very bad. They didn’t like us. When the border gates opened, they first let in the Ukrainians. But once we got to the border When we crossed over, the Indian embassy took care of the well of us. After that we didn’t have any problem,” said Shubhanshu.
“After that everything went smoothly. We got food and water. Some of my friends are still in shelter and they are like five-star accommodation, very nice. But the situation was bad at the Romanian border,” said the Delhi resident. Told NDTV.
Around 16,000 Indian students are still stuck in Ukraine. Many have shared photos and videos on social media from underground bunkers, subway stations and bomb shelters where they have been hiding since the Russian offensive began last Thursday. Around 9,000 Indian nationals have left by various special flights.
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