THIRUVANANTHAPURAM : The sound of siren to alert that it is time to rush to the bunkers is something the Indian students stuck in war-hit Ukraine cannot afford to miss. The students of Kharkiv National Medical University have been depending on Peremoha metro station to save themselves from the fierce bombing outside.
Hundreds of Indian students have made these metro stations their home for the last five days. “We were asked to shift to these when we heard the first blast outside our hostel on February 24. The situation worsened yesterday, and we are spending our time inside these coaches under unimaginable conditions,” Lakshmi Kaladharan, a student at the Kharkiv Medical University and a native of Payyanur, said.
Not only the students and local Ukrainians are residing inside these coaches, but their pets including dogs, cats and even mice are also sheltered here. “Every inch of the coach is occupied. With n o toilets inside the coaches, we depend on the metro station toilets that do not even have proper doors,” Lakshmi said.
The temperatures drop below zero at nights and the students depend on available clothes and jackets, staying close to each other to fight the cold. “The coaches and the metro main buildings have been closed with sheets that they say can even withstand nuclear attacks. But once the doors are shut, it is extremely claustrophobic, without any clue whether it is day or night,” Lakshmi added.
Their available food and water were almost on the verge of getti ng over, when they got a window of an hour to go out and collect some food at 7am on Monday. “The water is highly chlorinated and we are depending on bread and protein bars as solid food,” said Aparna Vinod, another student from Kannur. In the fear of waterborne diseases, the students have begun borrowing kettles from the local Ukrainians to boil the drinking water. Even worse are the toilet facilities at the metro bunker. “There are no separate toilets for men and women. Even among the available ones, the toilets are covered only on the two sides without a door, except for the main entrance leading to the toilets,” she said.
The occupants have also been asked not to click pictures or share videos with the outside world. “The Ukraine police ar e watching us. Also, it has been instructed to keep the mobile phones fully charged, as power outages are frequent,” Lakshmi said.
So far none of the Indian students has been rescued from the real warzone like Kharkiv and surrounding towns nearer to the Russian border. “We came to know that the students from Kyiv were told that they can take the free trains from there to nearby countries like Poland and Romania, but without a proper plan on whom to contact from there and how to proceed further, where would they go?” said Abdul Vahab, admission in-charge at the Kharkiv National Medical University.
Meanwhile, Union minister of state for external affairs V Muraleedharan said that the government has already initiated talks with the Russian government for the evacuation of the students from cities closer to the Russian border. “The foreign secretary had held talks with the Russian ambassador in New Delhi in this regard and the response was favourable. The officials from the Indian mission in Moscow will visit the Russian border areas and take account of the situation to evacuate the students,” Muraleedharan said.
Sriperumbudur Samaritan distributes free food
When the war broke out in the early hours of Thursday Bala Sankar, a native of Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, who runs an Indian restaurant in Ukraine’s Kharkiv for the past 10 years, had to immediately shift his wife Sonia, a Ukraine national, and their six-month-old baby Maran to a safe place about 100km away from the city.
However, Sankar stayed back in the war zone against his wife’s request and ever since he and his two brothers – Appu Krishnan and Sujit Kumar – have been helping the Indian students stranded in bun kers by providing them with food and water.
Over the past five days, Bala’s restaurant ‘1kg Biriyani’ and his charity organization Maran Foundation, named after his baby, have reached out to over 1,500 Indian students. They cooked food like biryani and pasta at their restaurant using the available stocks and delivered over 1,500 food packets to stranded Indian students.
“We have been associating with the Ukrainian Tamil Association and have been helping orphans and homeless people for many years. Ukraine is my second home and the country has provided me with a new life. So, I want to help people when the country is facing severe trouble. We got to know that hundreds of Indian students are stuck in bunkers without food and water. Short age of food and water is the main issue faced by those stranded in Kharkiv. So, we decided to cook food and distribute it until we ran out of groceries,” Sankar said.
As their grocery stock depleted and there we re no shops open, on Monday they had to procure fruits like apples and bananas to the students instead of cooked food. Many times they were stopped by the Ukrainian police and Russian Army for checking but they let them go after seeing the food packets. Often the bomb shells hit the road right in front of their vehicles.
“The first day I distributed food in some of the metro stations. Students added me to WhatsApp groups and let me know if they were in need of food. The only problem is that we could not reach out to all of them. Sometimes the army stops us and inspects our vehicle. They warn us not to roam around during curfew hours and ask us to hide in bunkers if we hear sirens. They are supportive now. As we have very little time, we inform students in advance to wait at the entrance by the time we reach there. Now, we are trying to procure groceries from the outskirts of the city,” he said.
Though he is not sure how long he could continue the service, he said he would keep trying. Beside food and water, they are also providing sanitary napkins and pads to the students in the bunkers.
