Ukraine: between resourcefulness and anxiety, two students recount their evacuation from their “second home”

Published on: 03/16/2022 – 18:18 Nearly three weeks after the start of the war in Ukraine, three million people have fled the country, including foreign students. An Indian student, who lived in Sumy and was able to return to his country at the end of the anguish, and an Eswatinian student who went to Romania on her own, tell their journey. A few days after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, foreign students, stranded in Sumy, in northern Ukraine, had launched calls for help on social networks to request their evacuation. On March 4, Mohammad Mahtab Raza, 23, a medical student at Sumy State University, expressed his concern to our editorial staff. With his comrades, they feared being caught between two enemy fires, to the point that they no longer dared to leave their residence from where they constantly heard the air strikes. The death of a 21-year-old Indian student in Kharkiv on March 1 had only heightened their concern. >> READ ON THE OBSERVERS: “No one is helping us”: in Ukraine, the despair of Indian and African students stranded near the Russian borderOn March 8, Mohammad Mahtab Raza and his comrades were finally able to be evacuated during a temporary truce allowing the opening of a humanitarian corridor between Sumy and Poltava, further south. According to the governor of the region, that day about 3,500 civilians left Sumy, including nearly 1,700 foreign students. #UPDATE | Embassy of India, Kyiv along with Indian World Forum & Ukrainian RedCross are assisting the stranded students through the journey from Sumy to Poltava from where they will board trains to western Ukraine. Flights under #OperationGanga being prepared to bring them home. pic.twitter.com/1hNMvHKbAr— ANI (@ANI) March 8, 2022 Tweet by Indian news agency ANI, video in one of 12 buses evacuating Indian students between Sumy and Poltava “The trip from Sumy to the border Polish seemed very long to us, and we were very afraid”After several days of travel, Mohammad Mahtab Raza is back in India. He tells :[Le 6 mars], the university staff told us that we were going to evacuate the next day. But on March 7, many of my fellow girls were already sitting on the bus that came to pick us up when they received a message that the evacuation plan was postponed. On March 8, at 8 o’clock in the morning, we were finally able to be evacuated from Sumy. Currently in Poland and we have 3 flights departing today at 4:30,5:30 & 6:30.Gratitude to the INDIAN GOVT.for our safety.Thankful for the support from MEA,INDIAN EMBASSY,RED CROSS,MEDIA for reaching out .Blessed with love from all the loved ones.@PMOIndia @RahulGandhi @JM_Scindia pic.twitter.com/zgaFbdj2Jk— IamMahtab (@DudeMahtab) March 10, 2022 On his Twitter account, Mohammad regularly posted videos with his comrades and he held his subscribers informed of the evolution of the situation. In this video, he speaks from Poland. We took a bus from Sumy to Poltava, then a train to Lviv. We arrived in Poland at 5:23 a.m. on March 9. The journey from Sumy to Lviv and from Lviv to the Polish border seemed endless. Mohammad (in the foreground on the camera) and his comrades at the train station in Lviv, western Ukraine, just before leaving for Poland. Video sent by Mohammad to the editorial staff of the France 24 Observers. © The France 24 Observers “The Ukrainians helped us to evacuate”We were very scared during the bus journey. I saw thousands of tanks and soldiers all along the road. It was impossible to sleep. When we arrived in Poland, we were all very happy. The Ukrainians helped us evacuate, and distributed some food between Sumy and Poltava. Then it was the Indian embassy that took care of our meals between Lviv and Poland. I am very happy to be back home.”We want to return to Ukraine as soon as possible. It is our second home”Some students residing in cities further west or in the center had left Ukraine. Ukraine in the early days of the war. This is the case of Vukile Dlamini, 19, originally from Eswatini (formerly called Swaziland) and a medical student in Vinnytsia, a city relatively spared from the conflict for the moment. She left the country by her own means on Friday February 26: In Vinnytsia, eight missiles targeted the airport, but the buildings are relatively spared for the moment. When I was there, we often heard the sirens and we had to go to a bunker. Even if there was no fighting, as we were three hours from kyiv, we were afraid that the Russians would arrive very quickly. We then left on Friday February 26 by bus with other comrades from Eswatini and Zimbabwe. We ordered this bus ourselves, which cost us about 100,000 hryvnia in total (2,500 each, or 77 euros). After 8 hours of driving, the bus dropped us off almost 20 kilometers from the Romanian border. There were a lot of traffic jams so we made the end of the journey on foot. On the way, Ukrainians offered us tea and cookies. Vukile films the journey on foot to the Romanian border. You can see the long traffic jams and the many pedestrians with suitcases. Videos sent by Vukile to the France 24 Observers editorial staff © France 24 Observers “I waited 7 hours before crossing the border”At the Romanian border, the situation became more complicated: there was an entrance for Ukrainians, and another for foreigners. There were many people from the African continent, the Middle East, or India. The Ukrainian soldiers did not open our entrance, whereas they let the nationals pass. I waited 7 hours before passing. When my turn finally came, the Ukrainians closed the passage right after me. Behind me, I was pushed, while the border guards held the door. Videos of Vukile in front of the Siret border post, between Ukraine and Romania, on December 27. Transmitted by Vukile to the France 24 Observers editorial office. © Geolocation here Video taken by Vukile after crossing the border on 27 December. We see the Ukrainian soldiers holding the passage and behind people who are waiting. Transmitted by Vukile to the editorial staff of the Observateurs de France 24 © Les Observateurs de France 24 Soldiers broke the shoulder of a young person from Zimbabwe with whom I was traveling. Another student was kicked in the face and had a gun pointed at him [Vukile n’a pas d’images de cette scène, mais plusieurs scènes de discriminations et de violences aux frontières ont été recensés en Pologne, NDLR]Arrived in Romania, we took a bus to Bucharest, where we stayed in a hotel, everything was organized by a pastor in connection with our embassy. Then I flew home a few days later. We want to return to Ukraine as soon as possible, when the war is over. It’s our second home. Vukile returned to her home in Eswatini on March 4th. Since returning home, she has run a support group to help those still in Ukraine. Ukrainian civilians and foreign students still stranded According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 3 million people had fled the Ukraine to March 15. About 157,000 are nationals of other countries. But civilians are still unable to leave the country. In the south of the country, in Kherson, a city now controlled by the Russian army, dozens of African students are stranded, without any concrete information concerning a possible evacuation.>> READ ON THE OBSERVERS: “No one came to us search”: the cry of distress of African students stranded in Kherson, a Ukrainian city controlled by the Russian army