LUCKNOW: With every passing day the struggle for survival is turning out to be more challenging for Indian students stuck in Kharkiv which is under Russian control.
Located over 1,000-km off the western border where evacuation is taking place, around 4,000 Indian students are stuck at Kharkiv which is on the eastern side of Ukraine. Surviving on biscuits and bread, they are all broken. They have been continuously texting TOI their struggle about staying in hostile conditions in a dark bunker for over 80 hours at a stretch. With no word from authorities on how they would be able to reach the border, students are losing hope every second.
Several students from Lucknow, who are stuck in bunkers at Kharkiv, are praying for lifting of curfew as was done in Kyiv so that they can travel to the western border for their safe evacuation. Amid heavy shelling, a few students also took the risk of going to a nearby supermarket despite the curfew as they didn’t have anything to eat. “I went to the supermarket at my own risk to get water bottles,” MBBS student Kritika Pandey told TOI. “We are surviving on bread and biscuits,” MBBS student Saumya said.
Another MBBS student Hriti Singh from Lucknow said, “It’s a struggle to live in a bunker. No washroom is available here. We are running short of groceries and potable water. It is also taking toll on our health.”
Expressing similar views, Kritika said, “We have to go to our flats once a day though it is too risky. We are not allowed to keep lights on for security reasons. We have to prepare food in torchlight. For the last four days we have been subsisting on boiled salted rice.”
(With inputs from Navneeta Nandan)
