They say they faced obstacles to get out of the war zone, helped only after crossing the border
They say they faced obstacles to get out of the war zone, helped only after crossing the border
Although most Indian students from Kharkiv, Ukraine have entered Hungary or Slovakia via Lviv, they are concerned that their friends who moved to Pisochin in addition to Sumi are trapped. There
Hundreds of students from the border town faced obstacles such as hostile Ukrainian soldiers trying to exit the battlefield a week after the start of the war, and were forced to take refuge in bunkers and underground railway stations.
“When we tried to board the train from Kharkiv we were pushed aside and sometimes beaten up. We were far ahead in the queue, it didn’t matter. “We waited all day at the starving and cold railway station before boarding the train to Lviv,” says Ansalna Aziz, a student at Kharkiv National Medical University, who hails from Idukki. She was part of a large group that arrived in Budapest, Hungary on Saturday.
Passenger Mohammed Ali, a sixth year student of VN.Karazhin National Medical University in Kharkiv, has also reached Hungary. He worries about his friends in Sumi, where rail and road connectivity has been disrupted in the gunfire. “There are about 700 Indian students in Sumi and they cannot leave without any kind of official help,” he says. The traveler along with about 40 friends boarded a flight from Kaharkiv to India on Saturday.
Despite efforts made by the Indian government in providing humanitarian corridors and transporting students from neighboring countries, there is widespread discontent among students crossing the border.
They allege that there was no significant help from the Indian Embassy in Ukraine. “We fought to get on the trains. We arranged vehicles for our transport to the borders. We walked a kilometer. We did all this ourselves. No one can take credit for what we did. It was only after we crossed the border that we got help from the embassy,” said Nihal, another student from Kharkiv, who had boarded a flight back home from Slovakia on Saturday.
“There are about 400 people in Pisochin. They went there based on the instructions of the embassy. But they could not get out there,” Nihal said.