South African students in the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine, woke to the sound of falling bombs on Thursday. They are stranded, with the Russian invasion of the country bringing air travel and public transport in the country to a halt. While the South African embassy is attempting to arrange visas to other countries for the students, transport out of their increasingly volatile areas remains a problem.
‘We literally woke up to the bomb sounds, we could hear them from our apartment — that’s what woke us up. We’re 30 minutes away from the borderline where these attacks are happening. We don’t feel safe at all.”
These were among the first words that South African medical student Kurhula Mushwana spoke when Daily Maverick contacted her on Thursday. Mushwana, with fellow medical students Charmaine Mnisi and Vutlhari Mtonga, lives in Kharkiv, Ukraine, not far from the Russian border.
No aeroplanes are travelling in and out of Ukraine, said Mushwana, nor are there trains to transport them to cities in safer areas.
“We’re not okay,” emphasised Mushwana. “We really feel like we’re stuck, and we really, we just want someone to hear us so that the government or someone like that can try…
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