Zaffer Ali, 23, a Kashmiri student enrolled in the Odessa National Medical University in Ukraine, woke up on Thursday just in time to prepare for Muslim dawn prayers during the small hours in this port city on the edges of Eastern Europe, when heard the wail of sirens, followed by loud bangs and thuds.
He rushed to the window of his dormitory and began filming the attack. The video, shared with The Quint, shows a plume of grey smoke spiralling in the air. Some students, Ali included, exclaimed in surprise and prayed for mercy.
An estimated 180 to 200 students from Jammu & Kashmir are currently living in Ukraine, most of them students of medicine.
Tensions gripped Kashmir on Thursday morning minutes after news channels beamed reports about the escalation of military hostilities in Eastern Europe as Russia announced a major military offensive against Ukraine.
'There's Panic All Around'
The war bugle in the region was already being sounded by major Western powers following Russia’s dramatic decision to recognise breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, parts of a united Ukrainian nation, as sovereign states.
The move, which sparked a major diplomatic standoff between the West and Russia, now appears to have snowballed into a big military confrontation, with the Russian army sending troops and armoury into the region and bombing Ukraine’s key military infrastructure.
Several reports suggested that Russian troops on Thursday landed in the city Odessa and marched their way across the border in the city of Kharkiv.
Casualties have also been reported as missiles arced over many Ukrainian cities through Thursday, landing with explosions. Ukraine had promised to hold out and fight Russia.
Ukrainian authorities also imposed martial law across the country and Kyiv closed its airspace for commercial traffic, leaving thousands of foreign nationals stranded. An estimated 15,000 Indian nationals find themselves marooned.
As chaotic scenes unfolded on television screens and social media, anxious parents in Kashmir, who were watching the news, made frantic calls to their kin.
Some students broke down over the phone. Others tried to explain the fraught situation. Many made demands for cash, which they were running short of.
“There’s panic all around,” Ali said over the phone from Odessa. He adds:
“We received an advisory from the Indian Embassy seven days back directing us to leave the country. But ticket prices were as high as Rs 70,000 and the situation was uncertain. So, we decided to hold out.”
Ali said when they informed the university about their initial decision to leave, the officials insisted on staying. “They told us if we left, they won’t be responsible for anything that happens and that our admissions at the university would be imperilled,” he said.
'Still No Updates from Indian Embassy'
On Thursday afternoon, an official from the Jammu & Kashmir’s Lieutenant-Governor’s office told a local wire news service that the Union Territory administration was in touch with Ukraine Embassy officials. “We will ensure all Kashmiri students are safely brought back,” the official said.
According to several reports, many parents had also planned to hold a sit-in at Srinagar’s Press Colony to demand the swift evacuation of their kin stuck in Ukraine amid intensifying military conflict. But the protest failed to materialise.
The Jammu and Kashmir Students Association (JKSA) reached out to stranded students with an information format requesting the stranded students to fill in details about their credentials. “Details of around 40 students were collected and shared with the J&K L-G office and the MEA [Ministry of External Affairs] to coordinate evacuation on a fast-track basis,” said Nasir Khuehami, national spokesperson, JKSA.
Social media was flooded with updates regarding the situation of Indian students in Ukraine, with many posting videos of traffic jams in Kyiv, Ukraine’s main city, as residents fled amid fears of an imminent invasion. Other visuals showed people queuing up outside stores to buy groceries.
“I woke up after hundreds of phone calls from my parents who were extremely worried,” said a Kashmiri student at Bogomolets National Medical University in Kyiv who did not want to be identified.”It was the same for every other student.”
He said there was a massive rush outside ATMs, and added:
“We have been told to keep extra cash with us and wait for updates from the Indian Embassy, but there are still no updates from them. We have started to pack our stuff and have already stocked up food and daily essentials.”
Costly Flight Tickets
India-based student consultants who facilitate admissions to Ukrainian universities decried what they described as “zero efforts” by the Indian Embassy in Ukraine and Ministry of External Affairs to evacuate Indian students in the run-up to the war, despite tell-tale signs of escalation.
“There were two communications from the Indian embassy in Ukraine. First, the students were told to fill in their details just so that in the event of any evacuation, officials will have a ready-made database to make things easier,” said Ravi Kumar Koul, an admission consultant. “The second communication advised students to consider leaving Ukraine temporarily if their stay was non-essential.”
Koul said that this “inconsistent” correspondence had left students panicked. “I got extremely tense calls from parents and students sounded even more desperate,” he said.
Earlier this week, amid a mounting political crisis between Ukraine and Russia, Air India announced that it will operate a series of ferry flights of Boeing Dreamliner between New Delhi and Ukraine on 22, 25 and 27 February and 6 March. The first flight from Kyiv landed in New Delhi on Tuesday, bringing back 254 students. But only those students who could afford the high cost of tickets – between Rs 60,000 and Rs 90,000 – managed to return successfully.
“Only one flight was able to operate out of all these,” Koul said. “Now, the airspace has been closed. The only way to bring these stranded students back is to arrange a road trip to Western Ukrainian cities like Lviv and Ternopil that are close to the borders with Poland and Romania. From there, the Indian missions can airlift the students back to India."
Koul adds, "After all, we faced a similar situation in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, and yet we managed to bring back most students successfully. It’s criminal on the part of the government to leave our children stranded in this way. I am getting calls from students from every part of Ukraine, and they are miserable and weeping.”
'We are Kashmiris, We Are Accustomed to Conflict Situations'
Many Kashmiri students said they had exhausted every means available to seek an escape but to no avail. “We are too terrified. We don't feel safe here. People are running for safer places and yet we are stuck in our hostels,” one female student at National Pirogov Memorial Medical University, Vinnytsia, told this correspondent via text after a series of phone calls crashed amid Internet disruptions.
“We don't even know when and where the next bomb will land. We can't even reach our families back home. We may run out of resources anytime soon. All we hear is explosions here and there. The atmosphere here is too tense,” she said.
“We are worried about our lives. We demand urgent evacuation as the conditions here are not conducive. I request concerned authorities to rescue us from here as soon as possible.”
Yet many more students like Ali sounded optimistic. “We are Kashmiris and accustomed to conflict situations,” he said. “Further, our time in Ukraine taught us many nuances of this region. A substantial chunk of local Ukrainians here in Odessa are pro-Russian in their political outlook, which is probably why the Kremlin is only targeting Ukraine’s military assets and sparing civilians.”
Ali said it was business as usual at his university, with officials announcing on WhatsApp groups that classes will be held on time. “Kashmiri students even survived the 2014 annexation of Crimea when the chaos pushed the price of essentials through the rooftops amid war,” he said. “Many Kashmiris who were admitted to what were once Ukrainian universities later obtained degrees from Russian-administered Crimea.”
(Shakir Mir is a freelance journalist who has reported for the Times Of India and The Wire, among other publications. He tweets at @shakirmir.)
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