Ukrainian guards not allowing us to board trains, beating up people: Indian student from Kyiv station

A fighter of the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Forces. Pic/ AFP

Ukrainian guards were not allowing students to board trains and also beating up people, an Indian student who managed to reach the Kyiv train station said on Monday, making a fervent appeal to the Indian embassy to evacuate them as soon as possible.

"It's getting difficult for us to stay here," Ansh Pandita told PTI as scores of Indian students, including women, sat huddled together at the teeming Vokzal railway station in Kyiv, holding a large tricolour aloft so they could be recognised in the crowd and also so no one from the group gets lost.

The group of about 100 students managed to reach the station but no one could board a train.

"Ukrainian soldiers are not allowing us to board the train to Hungary. In fact, they are not allowing any international resident to get out," Pandita, a student of Taras Shevchenko National Medical University in Kyiv, said over the phone from the station.

"We requested them to at least allow the girls to go but that request too fell on deaf ears," he said.

Earlier in the morning, the Indian Embassy in Ukraine advised all Indian students stranded in Kyiv to reach the station so they could travel on to border countries and then move on homewards.

"Finally, we came to the railway station. The Indian embassy told us to come here quickly. Ukrainian guards are not letting anyone board. People are being beaten up. This place is so crowded. People are scared. We are sitting with our flag," Pandita added.

The students also issued a video appeal.

"Indian embassy we request you to evacuate us as soon as possible," Pandita, who lives in Ghaziabad, said in the video as his friends looked on.

The 20-year-old, whose twin sister Ashna also studies in Ukraine, said families at home are tense and waiting anxiously for them.

In a video sent to family and friends at home, Ashna showed a train with closed doors and shuttered windows. "This train didn't let us in. They closed the door on our faces. They pushed us out. We are all waiting here," she said.

Though officials from the Indian mission had assured them of assistance, there was no one to help them at the airport. None of the officials were answering their phones either, the students alleged as tension escalated in the war-torn country.

India has managed to accelerate its efforts to get its nationals out of Ukraine in the last 24 hours, the Ministry of External Affairs said here, adding that the situation continues to be "complex and fluid" in terms of evacuation of people.

It said a total of 1,396 Indians were brought back home in six flights as part of the evacuation mission and the total number of Indians who have left Ukraine since India issued the first advisory earlier this month is around 8,000.

The government is sending four Union ministers as the Prime Minister's envoys to Poland, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Moldova to oversee the evacuation of Indians from Ukraine through its border crossings with these countries.

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