‘I Tell My Family I’m Fine, but I’m Not’: UP Students Stuck in Ukraine Say Bomb Shelters Overcrowded, No Place to Go

“Sometimes I don’t even feel like talking. I have posted a status on my Whatsapp that says ‘I’m fine’, although I’m not,” says 24-year-old Prabhas Kumar, a medical student from Uttar Pradesh’s Jaunpur district who is stuck in conflict-hit Ukraine.

Like Prabhas, a fourth-year MBBS student at the Kharkiv National Medical University, many other students from UP and the rest of India are stranded in the eastern European country that has been invaded by Russia.

The students said they tried to find space in bomb shelters built by the local government but those were “too crowded” so they returned to their university hostel.

They want the Indian government to either evacuate them at the earliest or make some arrangements so that like other students from Middle East and other nations, they can also be shifted to “nearby, safer” countries such as Romania, Poland, Hungary.

When Russia announced the invasion earlier this week, they said several students who could afford the costly airfares left home for India, while the rest were left to fend for themselves in the face of “exorbitant” airline fares. Like Prabhas, his college mates Kuldeep Kumar from Unnao, Vishal Yadav from Varanasi and Abhinav Patel, all aged between 22 and 24 years, are also stuck in the European nation as flight services stopped on Thursday. “My father is in government service. I’m not upper-class. Rs 65,000 for a one-way flight is not reasonable. Had it been cheaper this situation would not have arisen,” Prabhas told .