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Ukraine-Russia tussle: Videos showing fleeing Indians being attacked trigger panic
On Sunday, the Centre had directed Indian nationals to go to western Ukraine to be evacuated via Romania and Hungary. However, students alleged that embassy officials were clueless about the situation at these borders.
By
migrator
migrator
Chennai
Spreading fear among those stuck in Ukraine and their kin here, videos and audio clips have surfaced showing Indians being heckled and even attacked by the personnel on the Poland and Romania borders.
On Sunday, the Centre had directed Indian nationals to go to western Ukraine to be evacuated via Romania and Hungary. However, students alleged that embassy officials were clueless about the situation at these borders.
“My friends who have been waiting at these borders for the past two days have confirmed that Indians are being attacked and abused. Only Ukrainians are allowed to cross the border,” Ruben Gladwin, who is doing MBBS in Dnipro State Medical University in Ukraine, told DT Next over phone. “Though we have informed the Embassy officials, no steps have been taken,” Ruben added.
In an audio clip, a girl from Kerala is heard saying how students were being assaulted at the borders. “Indian students were thrashed by Ukrainian forces on the Polish border,” she says. The videos show uniformed personnel, allegedly Ukrainians, manhandling Indians due to what is believed to be anger over India’s abstention from voting on the UNSC resolution against Russia.
‘Armed men forced students play games, mocked those ill’
In the audio clip, a girl from Kerala says: “The armed men forced students to play games, saying they would be allowed to cross the border only if they played. They mocked a student who has asthma.”
Meanwhile, students in Kharkiv in eastern part of Ukraine where the situation is much more tense, continue to take shelter in bunkers and underground metro rail stations. Due to the curfew imposed in the city, they are unable to step out for food and water. “Our supplies are running out fast; if the situation continues for a day more, we will be left without water or food. We are ready to be evacuated but there are no signs of it,” said Kirubarakan Sundar Rajan, a third-year medical student of Kharkiv National Medical University.
‘We couldn’t contact them for hours’
Boobalan, the father of Shaantanu from Salem, a college professor, said he wanted to bring his son back to Chennai on February 24, on the first day of war itself, but failed since the airport in Kyiv closed. “My son had to travel back to the college hostel and then reach Romania using arrangements made by the college administration. He spent 40 hours on the road travelling back and forth. There was trouble contacting them when they were about to cross Romania. There are still many stuck in Kyiv,” he said.
All five are first-year medical students of Bukovinian State Medical University, who went to Ukraine last December. They reached Delhi along with other students from different states on Sunday morning and then boarded a flight to Chennai.
Minister KS Masthan who received the students at the airport said 12 more students would reach Chennai from Mumbai later in the day. He said there are at least 5,000 students from Tamil Nadu in Ukraine and details of about 1,800 students have been received and steps are on to contact the others.
Meanwhile, BJP women wing members raised slogans praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the airport, leading to chaos.
‘Walked 8 km to cross border, reach Romania’
“There was struggle, struggle for everything, including food, but after we entered Romania, it felt normal, safe,” said S Harihara Sudhan, a resident of Triplicane. Vaishnavi Devi Sathiyamoorthy, another student from Theni district, said that they had to walk about 8 kms to reach the Romanian border as vehicles had piled up on the stretch with more people desperate to flee from Ukraine. They were two of the five students pursuing medicine who safely landed in Chennai from Ukraine. The other students are Shaantanu Boobalan, Selvipriya Vivek and Sameer Aboobakkar. Vaishnavi Devi said that she stayed on the western part of Ukraine where the impact of the war was not felt so much, but she urged the government to rescue the students who are stuck on the eastern side of Ukraine where the war is raging. “We were evacuated before it got worse, “ she said.
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