New Delhi, 4 March 2022 – As per Union Minister VK Singh, an Indian student has been shot at by the Ukrainian Military while he was trying to escape Kyiv on Thursday – 3 March 2022. The student’s identity is not revealed yet and the minister noted that the student was trying to escape Kyiv and was wounded in firing. The said victim has been taken back into the city and is being tended to in a hospital.
Retired General VK Singh told ANI at Poland’s Rzeszow Airport, “We heard reports that a student leaving Kyiv was shot. He was taken back into Kyiv and immediately taken to hospital. This is happening in the fighting.”
This news has come when two Indian students have already died in Ukraine due to the war. First, 21-year-old Naveen Shekharappa, a fourth-year MBBS student at the Kharkiv National Medical University, was killed in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv near the Russian border.
Then, another medical student Chandan Jindal, who was studying at the Vinnytsia National Pyrogov Memorial Medical University, suffered an Ischemic stroke due to the war. He was admitted in Emergency Hospital Vinnytsia (Kyivska street 68), where he passed away on March 2.
Russia Alleges Hostage Situation in Kharkiv
Russian President Vladimir Putin has alleged that Ukraine has taken a large number of Indian students hostage in a train station in Kharkiv. .
He noted during a speech at the Security Council of Russia, “They are taking hostage foreign citizens, including thousands of students who went to college in Ukraine. For more than one day at a train station in Kharkiv 3179 Indian citizens were held prisoner. They are still there … most of them are still there, including 576 people in Sumy. Neo Nazis opened fire at Chinese citizens who wanted to leave Kharkiv, two of them were wounded.”
Putin also noted that “hundreds” of foreign citizens were being prevented by the Ukrainian forces from leaving Kharkiv and said, “Basically, they are taking prisoners.”
Ukraine–Russia Agree to Create Evacuation Corridors for Students
Ukraine’s Kharkiv has a large number of Indian, Chinese, and African students who are still to be evacuated. Due to the mounting international pressure for evacuation of these students, Ukraine and Russia have come to a mutual agreement to create a humanitarian corridor to let all foreign citizens (including students) exit from the war-torn country.
Talking about this decision, Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak noted, “The second round of talks is over. Unfortunately, Ukraine does not have the results it needs yet. There are decisions only on the organisation of humanitarian corridors.”
Note: Thousands of Indian students have been trying to escape Ukraine by reaching the country’s borders, where they can cross over to neighbouring nations and then be flown back to India through evacuation flights under the Indian government’s “Operation Ganga”.
