Even as one Goan student stranded in Ukraine arrived safely in Delhi raising hopes of security, the death of a third-year medical student hailing from Karnataka due to Kharkiv shelling brought in pain, anguish and uncertainty. The boy was standing in a queue for food when an airstrike blew up the area killing him instantaneously.
An Indian advisory has asked all nationals holed up in Kyiv to leave urgently, but has this come too late? With forces closing in on Kyiv, exiting the town has not only become an ordeal but also fraught with huge risks of survival. Videos continue to surface where students say they are not being allowed to board trains, are manhandled and physically thrown out of trains. Students narrate a torturous ordeal of walking miles through sub-zero temperatures, they are being made to wait for hours without food and water and to top it all, there is a constant fear of being caught in a crossfire. To make matters worse students have been exposed to some hostile treatment from the Ukrainian guards at border check posts of Kyiv and Kharkiv apparently in an angry reaction to India abstaining from the UN Security Council vote condemning Russia's aggression.
The government has sent out an evacuation advisory at a time when no students would choose to extend their stay in war-torn parts of Ukraine, and given the count of students stranded, it only required a herculean effort to ensure their security and evacuation. On the current scale, it would take India nearly 20 days to clear all its students from Ukraine. What’s worse is that appeals to both Russia and Ukraine for a safe passage to Indians has not helped as there is no visible change on the ground.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been holding a series of meetings with his high-level teams and four ministers are deputed in various States to facilitate evacuation. In a war of this magnitude, neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor Ukrainian head of State Volodymyr Zelenskyy would care for the safety of other nationals when there are far bigger stakes and challenges at hand. In a war of this intensity, no voices would be heard, which is why the evacuation process should have been initiated much earlier. The government failed to assess the situation and went for optics bordering on the hope that the situation will die down soon.
In Goa, following the Central directives, collectors and staff fanned out to reassure families of those stranded in Ukraine. The question is, on what premise are families being comforted? Besides keeping the diplomatic channels open and undertaking Operation Ganga to ferry passengers, there is very little that India could achieve right now. The Russian forces are firing artillery and laying siege to Kharkiv and other cities, and there is no sign of the war ebbing. Families of those held up in Ukraine will have to hold on to beads of hope and prayer for the safe return of their loved ones.
