India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to ensure that Indian students studying in Ukrainian universities can safely leave the country.
Part of Kharkiv University in Ukraine has been destroyed by a missile and is on fire. Credit: Supplied
India has told students in the country to leave immediately, based on advice it had received from the Russians.
Kharkiv, which has been under heavy Russian assault all week and again today, is a university city. At least 28 people are thought to have been killed in the last 24-hours and more than 120 wounded in the rocket attacks.
On Tuesday, an Indian student was killed in the shelling and thousands are thought to be trapped in Ukraine’s second-largest city.
It is not known how many students are in the city exactly, but before the war around a quarter of Ukraine’s 76,000 foreign students were from India – most of them studying medicine.
Putin falsely told Modi that the Ukrainians were keeping Indian students hostage.
“The Russian side, in particular, is trying to organise an urgent evacuation of a group of Indian students from Kharkiv through a humanitarian corridor on the shortest route to Russia,” the Kremlin said in a statement.
“However, according to the latest information, these students have actually been taken hostage by Ukrainian security forces who use them as a living shield and in any way obstructing their entry to Russian territory.”
Discussion about this post