PANAJI: In the South Goa village of Benaulim, the Gomes Pereira family fervently prays for the return of their son, Jaeden. Holed up in a bunker in eastern Ukraine, the 19-year-old, along with other Indian students, are running out of food and battling mental fatigue even as fighting rages on in the central Asian country.
The city of Sumy is just 60km from the Russia border. The Indian evacuation mission is currently underway in western Ukraine, from the border it shares with Romania. However, the journey from east to west across Ukraine — Europe’s second-largest country — is fraught with danger, the trip being a minimum of 16 hours long, and passing through the capital, Kyiv.
