25 km on foot to escape Kharkiv: ‘There was no one there to help us’

Mishra was one of hundreds of medical students who walked 25 km to reach Pesochin late Wednesday, after the Indian embassy gave an urgent call on Twitter to all students in Kharkiv to leave within four hours and reach shelters at three location around the city.

He had attempted to leave the city by train a day before the embassy’s call but couldn’t find any vehicle to the station. On Wednesday morning, he was lucky to get a taxi. But that’s where his luck ran out.

“It was a stampede-like situation,” Mishra said. “Some students were able to get on the train to Lviv, but most of us were stranded at the station. That’s when we decided to walk to the towns the embassy had advised (them to reach).”

As the group started walking, there was a blast a couple of hundred metres away.

“We were shell-shocked. Some people fell down either because of the force or the shock. All of us walked yesterday, risking our lives.”

Describing the place where students have been put up, Mishra said, “Yesterday it was quiet here. I didn’t hear blasts for the first time in days. Now it has started again. Are we even safe here?”

Dr K P S Sandhu, one of the education contractors (who arranges for admissions, travel and stay of Indian students in Ukraine) for the region, in his video updates on Instagram said there were 1,200 students stuck in Kharkiv. While a couple of hundred managed to board the trains, around 500 stayed back at the station bunker, and the others walked to the three towns.

He was trying to arrange for buses to take the students to the border.

“I know that a couple of my friends were stuck in Kharkiv till afternoon; now even they might have started walking to these shelters,” Mishra said. “But how does that matter? It’s not like we know how to reach the border from here. We haven’t heard about any plans from the embassy.

“The government is calling this an evacuation…but they have been flying out people from the western parts of the country who were already safe. Those who managed to reach the borders did so on their own. Nobody was there to help them.”