Every time a siren is sounded, Janagam Prashanth and his five flat-mates sprint to a dingy bunker in their rented apartment and take cover. The only other sound that they hear throughout the day and even at night is that of bombs exploding, with alarming regularity.
The six are cooped up in an apartment in Kyiv, the capital of war-hit Ukraine, where residents are facing nightly airstrikes and grappling with food shortages. Prashanth, a third year MBBS student of Bogomolets National Medical University in Kyiv, says they are surviving on one meal a day and killing hunger pangs by gulping water. “We are running short of drinking water, so we are relying on hard water now. There is a scarcity of groceries. Only cash is accepted, not cards. We are running short of cash now. Six of us live in a flat. So, we are managing with bare-minimum resources,” shares Prashanth, who hails from Mahbubabad.
Not food or water, but safety is their prime concern. “Every time there is an explosion, we get rattled. We don’t know what kind of situation will unfold in the dead of the night. We want to get out of here. But the Indian Embassy has not told us when we can expect to be evacuated. The war does not appear to end anytime soon,” he laments.
The students step out of the bunker and into their flat during the day. That is the time when they cook and eat their one and only meal of the day. “Even while cooking, we can hear bombs going off at a distance,” Prashanth says.
Telangana government officials who are coordinating for the evacuation efforts say that most distress calls received by them are from parents whose children are stuck in Kyiv.
P. Ashok Kumar, a resident of Hyderabad, has been disturbed and worried about his daughter Vaithrani Goud’s safety. A third year MBBS student of Zaporozhye State Medical University, she has also been spending most part of the day in a bunker. “We are requesting all authorities to evacuate my daughter and others from Zaporozhye at the earliest. A siren was sounded when I was speaking to her on Sunday night. She had to leave her food and run to the bunker,” says Mr Ashok, adding that the consultancy firm which took the responsibility of sending her to the university must step foward to support Vaithrani and other students and help them return home safely.
