India News | Sleepless Nights, Panic, Sounds of Bombardment: Jharkhand Student Shares Ukraine Ordeal

Ranchi, Feb 26 (PTI) Md Shahrukh Ansari, 23, a fourth-year student at Kyiv Medical University in Ukraine, could not sleep through the night on Friday at his apartment in Kyiv amid intermittent sounds of bombshells and gunfire.

Ansari, a resident of Jhumri Telaiya in Jharkhand's Koderma district, has locked himself in a room along with his five friends, including two each from Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh and one from Assam.

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They are eagerly waiting for their turn to return to India.

“The situation is very critical here. We are spending sleepless nights amid sounds of bombardments and gunfire. Even though bunker shelters have been created within the campus, the vulnerable situation has left us in panic. We want to return to India anyhow. I request the Indian government as well as the Hemant Soren government in Jharkhand to please do something for our safe return as early as possible,” Ansari told PTI over WhatsApp call from Kyiv.

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Pointing out that they were in touch with the Indian Embassy there, Ansari said, “We have been asked to wait for information from the Embassy and not to venture out.”

Ansari's elder brother Saif Ali, who runs a business in Jhumri Telaiya, told PTI, his sibling went to Ukraine for medical studies in 2018.

“Since then, he is living there. We never thought that situation will become like this. We urge the state government to bring my brother back from Ukraine,” Saif Ali said.

Ansari is not an isolated case. More than 100 students who went to study in Ukraine from Jharkhand are trapped in different locations.

An official with the state control room, set up by the Jharkhand government to help families of students and workers stuck in crisis-hit Ukraine, said, “We have received about 100 calls regarding students and workers trapped in Ukraine since Friday night.”

Head of the state control room Johnson Topno told PTI, as many as 86 students of Jharkhand have been traced to different parts of Ukraine till 5 pm on Saturday.

Of them, 62 are men and 18 are women, he said.

Noting that they have traced the highest number of 23 students from Ranchi followed by 11 each from Hazaribagh and Sahibganj in Ukraine, Topno said calls are still pouring in.

Most of the callers are medical students studying in Kharkiv National Medical College, National Pirogov Memorial Medical University, Bogomolets National Medical University, Poltawa University Kyiv, and others, he said.

“The students have narrated that they are trapped in bunkers, and places near the Russian and Romanian borders. They are waiting for the opening of the border so that transportation becomes easier,” he said.

Topno said that the state control room would submit a detailed list to the state government so that it can coordinate with the Centre accordingly.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Hemant Soren announced that the state will reimburse the airfare of those who are returning from war-torn Ukraine on personal expenses.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)