Vishal Chaudhary, a 24 year old medical student from Karnal, recounts how he fled the war zone in Ukraine amid air bombings and destruction
I come from a village named Gharaunda in Karnal (Haryana). I was studying at Dnipropetrovsk State Medical Academy, Dnipro, Ukraine. I saw the real horrors of a war up close and the trauma will remain etched in my memory for life.
It’s horrific to recall my journey from Ukraine to India. I witnessed bombs raining close by, tanks growling on streets and Russians taking over check-posts from Ukrainian soldiers.
I, along with several fellow medical students, were in Dnipro on February 24 when Russia officially declared the war. The city is around 250 km from Russian border but we started hearing the sound of fighter planes and bomb blasts from day one of the war. Probably, Russian war planes had entered the city airspace.
Water and electricity supplies were cut off first. We rushed to the market to buy some food for us, but a majority of items had gone off the shelves. We collected whatever little we could lay our hands on.
The next challenge was money. Suddenly, all the card swiping system had gone out of order. No one was receiving money via online payment. Everyone was asking for cash. And cash was not available in most ATMs. We had to stay in a queue for two hours to get just a few thousand Ukrainian Hryvnia from a functional ATM.
Things deteriorated on a daily basis. We would run to the bunkers every time the war siren signalled. On February 26, we permanently shifted to the bunker. To get help, we contacted the Indian Embassy in Ukraine but their response from them was shocking. They said that they could not provide us any help in this situation. We realised that we were on our own.
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On February 28, we arranged a bus and left the city for Chop, a border city between Ukraine and Hungary. We had put an Indian flag at the front of the bus. We were crammed in the bus like chickens and travelled for 22 hours. We were stopped at various checkpoints by the Ukrainian forces.
We witnessed horrible things during the journey — burnt houses, vehicles and dead bodies. People are running for their lives. There was destruction and devastation all around. We heard the war was fast spreading to different cities of Ukraine.
Nearly a day after we had begun, we reached the Chop city which was connected to Hungary via train. The condition at the station was miserable. A huge number of people had gathered there to board the train and cross over to Hungary.
We had to wait for more than 10 hours before we were allowed to board the train. We finally reached Budapest on March 3 and there we got a lot of help from Indians living there. I finally landed in India on March 5. Those were the longest six days of my life.
I am happy to have reached home alive but my problems are not over. There is uncertainty over my unfinished education. I am not sure when or where I will resume my studies. There are assurances from the government but I don’t know if these promises will be fulfilled. I pray for an end to this war so that people and students like us could return to Ukraine.
As told to Md Tausif Alam