Panic stricken, maligned, grieving: Plight of Indian students in Ukraine

Hyderabad: “Everything shivers. A dhamaka (blast) near my residence today made my table and the windows of my room quiver. Each time a blast happens, everything shivers,” remarks Ashiq Hussain Sarkar, who is still stuck somewhere between Kyiv and Kharkiv in Eastern Ukraine.
Ashiq and his two roommates have not slept for more than two hours at a stretch in the last week. Even two hours for them is somewhat of a luxury. He notes that very soon they will run out of groceries which they had tried their best to be careful with. “Water is scarce too. At times we end up drinking tap water because that’s what we are left with,” he told Siasat.com over a WhatsApp call from Ukraine.
Ashiq along with around 900 Indian students (by his estimate), who were enrolled in Sumy state university in Ukraine, have found themselves trapped in between the Eastern Ukrainian regions of Kyiv and Kharkiv, which are currently being attacked by neighbouring Russia.
Both cities along with the rest of Ukraine are witnessing bomb blasts, airstrikes and other forms of the military offensives after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an attack last week on the country. It has left hundreds of foreign students, especially Indians, stranded, and petrified.
To be caught in a war between two nation-states, as a spectator, is not what Indian students like Ashiq, signed up for.
In a different yet similar account, Saad Ansari, another undergraduate medical student who was studying in Ukraine, spent a night at the Bucharest international airport in Romania after finally managing to get out of Ukraine with immense difficulty.