Vijayawada, February 25, 2022: Over 20,000 Indian students in Ukraine universities, including about 3,000 from the Telugu states, are looking for help to return following Russian invasion of Ukraine early on Thursday.
Students attending various PG courses are held up in their respective universities as Ukraine suspended its airspace movement due to the invasion. Though several students had booked their tickets for February 24 and 25, the flights were cancelled, forcing the students to stay back in their universities.
Meanwhile, the AP government has appointed two special officers to make arrangements to bring the Telugu students back home safe from Ukraine. The government appointed Ravi Shankar as nodal officer at AP Bhavan in New Delhi, while retired IFS officer Gitesh Sharma has been appointed as special officer for international cooperation. Both these officers are available for contact on 9871999055 and 7531904820, respectively.
Ravi Sankar said around 20,000 students from different parts of India are in Ukraine, of which around 2,500 to 3,000 are from Telangana and AP. Parents of the Telugu students are a worried lot with reports of war in Ukraine and closure of the universities. Kali Sasidhar, a student from Zaporizhzhia State Medical University, said they booked flight tickets for February 25. However, the war was launched a day earlier and their flight was cancelled. “We are now in our hostel room in the university,” Sasidhar told TOI over phone.
He added that Indian embassy officials in Ukraine are in constant touch with the students. “We were asked to stay back in our hostel rooms,” Sasidhar, who is in the last semester of his four-year post-graduate medicine course, said. The student hails from Nuzvid town in Krishna district, where his parents live.
About 30 students from Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram, and Srikakulam are studying at Kharkiv National Medical University and they have taken shelter inside bunkers in Naukova city on the eastern border of Ukraine according to the reports published in timesofindia.indiatimes.com.
“We are in a helpless situation as there is no information from Indian authorities. We are facing problems for food and water. We heard the sounds of bombing a couple of hours ago and our university authorities asked us to hide in bunkers in the hostel located in Oleskiviska,” said Srija Reddy, who hails from Vizag.
Srija, daughter of cement merchant Arjun Reddy from Rampuram in Pendurthi mandal, went to Ukraine on December 8 last year. The first-year medical student showed the bunker through a video call in which she and her classmates besides other students of the university have taken shelter.
