An Indian student stranded in Ukraine amid Russian military operations, turned good Samaritan when he helped a Pakistani girl studying in Kyiv reach the Romanian border from where she was evacuated to her homeland.
Ankit Yadav, who recently returned from the conflict-hit Ukraine recounted that he helped her reach the Pakistani embassy from where she was evacuated to her homeland. “I met her at a bunker on the evening of February 24. I was the only Indian and she was the only Pakistani in that bunker which was filled with Ukrainians. Due to the language barrier, we could not speak to anybody else. With rising tensions in Ukraine, we decided to make a plan to flee the city. We had planned to leave on February 26, but a curfew was imposed and we failed in our first attempt,” Yadav said.
Narrating his ordeal after landing at the Delhi international airport, Yadav who is studying at a Kyiv institute said that due to continuous shelling and Russia’s military operations they were not allowed to leave the bunker. He said that getting food was an issue as Ukrainians were mostly consuming non-vegetarian food and supplies were depleting.
“When I requested, they allowed to let me leave the bunker on February 27 to getting a nasal spray. That is when I fled to my hostel with a curfew in place, cooked food for both of us and returned,” Yadav said. “With not enough food, on the night of February 27 we only consumed rice provided to us by the Ukrainians and slept,” he added.
On February 28 when curfew lifted, Yadav said they managed to flee the bunker.
“About that time she received a call from the Pakistani Embassy. When she told them that she was still in Kyiv and did not have any other person from her country with her, the officials of the embassy requested that I accompany her to the border for safety concerns,” he said.
After trudging for about 5 km to the railway station, Yadav said that they met some more students but could not board the overcrowded train because of which they missed first three trains.
“Luckily, we got the next train but there no empty seats left and we had to sit on the floor. Sometime later we heard a blast in our train and eventually, the train began to move slowly and took us to our destination,” Yadav said.
The Pakistani girl, he said, then contacted her embassy, which arranged a taxi and arranged a bus with other Pakistani nationals to evacuate them to the Romania border. Meanwhile, earlier in the day, Minister of State for External Affairs V Muraleedharan informed that over 11,000 Indians have been evacuated from Ukraine so far.
The government has deployed ‘special envoys’ to four neighbouring countries bordering Ukraine to coordinate and oversee the evacuation process of Indian nationals. Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri is overseeing evacuation efforts in Hungary, Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju in Slovakia, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in Romania and Gen VK Singh in Poland.
