Waiting Out War Underneath Sumy State University

700 Indian students trying to survive in Sumy, lacking basic resources and transportation amid bureaucratic negligence.

The country estate Kachanovka, by Alexei Yakovlevich Voloskov (1849). A painting of an estate in Chernihiv, from the Regional Art Museum, Sumy. Via Getty.

On the 15th of February, The Indian embassy in Ukraine asked Indian students to evacuate the country as the situation intensified between Ukraine and Russia. But instead of a resolute, planned evacuation, the Modi government was busy with its election campaigning, and the desperate cries from 20,000 civilians in Ukraine fell on deaf ears. By the time the Indian government started a high-PR, nationalistic approach to evacuating its civilians—mostly medical students—two lives had been lost. Journalist Sindhuja Sankaran reports:
—Rana

"Sumy is under attack now. We can hear a blast nearby,” wrote Vivek¹, a medical student from Tamil Nadu. “I'll text you later." The blast was a sound of the battle between Russian and Ukrainian forces over the countries’ border in Sumy Oblast, in northeast Ukraine; when they heard it, the students retreated to bunkers beneath the hostels where they were staying at Sumy State University. A week later in the war-torn country and still in those bunkers, these students have learned a great deal about war. 

Because of continuous shelling, more than 700 Indian students are marooned in the region. They have no food, no electricity, and for days they had no water. The majority are medical students; a few study engineering, agriculture, or other disciplines. Most are from the state of Kerala, on the coast. The land-locked Sumy is like mini-Kerala, says Vivek. 

There are six hostels in total, and most Indians are in three of them; each hostel has a separate bunker. Vivek describes the conditions of the bunker as "cold, with no flooring, full of dust with no seating and sleeping arrangements." He said people had to sit huddled in a group on the cold, dirty floor. 

Scarcity of basic resources

The conditions are squalid and the week has been long. The students are afraid that they will be killed if they are not evacuated soon; they have not had electricity since March 3. Sumy Oblast Governor Dmytro Zhyvytskyi has said he plans to evacuate the region before civilian homes turn into "cold, stone traps." But trains and buses can’t leave Sumy because the Russians have destroyed roads and bridges out of the city. All routes out are blocked.

The students have been reduced to collecting snowmelt to drink. "I request to goi PLEASE evacuate us , if war won’t kill us starvation n thirst will”, wrote one student, Shivangi Shibu on Twitter.

The snowfall in Ukraine has been constant and the cold seeps into the basements. The stench of fear has begun to overwhelm the rooms; Indian students have taken to social media to plead for evacuation. "No electricity, which means no food as without we can't cook food too,” Vivek told me over WhatsApp. “Shops are closed now, so we can't even go out to buy fruits or just bread and jam. We are also without water." On March 5, a humanitarian group in Ukraine reached the students with some water; since then, local Ukrainians have been helping to keep them fed.

Could the students have left earlier?

A lot of the evacuation coordination for the students in Ukraine was left to the agents who secured admission for them in Ukrainian universities. Vivek and a few other students claimed that a few agencies, such as Aspire Institute and Santa Monica Institute, both based in Kerala, were connected to the Ukrainian universities where they are studying. The agents represent each of these institutes, and they earn a commission for every student."I came here through an agent,” Vivek said. “All other countries' fee was high, so I decided on Ukraine as it was cheaper. Every student gets a 1000$ commission for bringing in another student to study at the university. I talked with a student who was studying here at that time. He said only good things about the university, so I joined. The tuition fee was 5000 USD per year. The plan was to get an MBBS degree and focus on my PG elsewhere. It's my fault that I'm here. I should have chosen a better country."

According to Vivek and his friends, the agent they worked with – Renish Joseph – instilled a fear in the students. Joseph, they said, did not let them evacuate on time. "When the Indian government gave the notice on 22nd Feb, he (Renish) kept saying that there was no war... nothing, and demanded us to just stay here to get our classes done," Vivek said. Other students claimed that the university insisted on having in-person classes until the 26th Feb, which made it impossible for them to leave earlier. When it was finally time to evacuate, the students needed to take the RT-PCR test for COVID and travel to Kyiv for 6 hours after that. With the 24-hour waiting period for the test results and the start of the war on 24th Feb, the students had only half a day to leave. "The authorities announced everything too late. The Indian embassy sent us the information too late, and they have been unreachable. By the time we could even try to organise to leave on our own, the air space was closed, and we couldn't leave Sumy due to heavy shelling." said Vivek.  

When asked why the agent had so much authority over the decision of the students to leave Ukraine, Vivek said, "Students fear these agents because they have the power to expel students from the universities. He (Renish) uses the fear of expulsion as a threat, so he asked us to stay in Ukraine; otherwise, he would expel us. These agents and the companies have a lot of power here." The main reason the students were still in Sumy, Vivek said, was because of the agents. The embassy and the university did not allow them to go home when they could, and they kept delaying the evacuation process. Vivek said something similar happened during the pandemic, and evacuation was postponed. So they were stuck.

Students cannot leave Sumy without a humanitarian corridor

There is no way across borders to Poland, Hungary, Romania, or Slovakia; the shortest  would be a 20-hour journey with no local transportation. Even if transportation materialized, one student who spoke on condition of anonymity told me over WhatsApp, "It is not at all safe. There is consistent bombing". The only solution is a humanitarian corridor into Russia, only 40kms away. "Only the Indian embassy can get us out, and we have not heard anything from them," says Vivek

Relief seemed to be coming: Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, head of the Russian National Defense Control Centre, announced the departure of 130 buses from Nekhoteyevka and Sudzha checkpoints in the Belgorod Region in Russia at 6:00 a.m. on March 4. Again, this was 40km away from where the students are currently sheltering away from bomb blasts, and the students had no information about evacuation to the buses.

MP Kanimozhi, of the DMK party in Tamil Nadu, wrote to the Ministry of External affairs demanding a more rapid response. " Students are unable to board these buses as they are far from these checkpoints and need to travel to these checkpoints,” she wrote. “However, they cannot do so without the Ukrainian authorities to coordinate and help the evacuation process and allow the students to board these buses."

"We can't survive here without water; we need to evacuate today,” wrote Vivek on March 4. “Please arrange some transport; otherwise, we have to leave to the border, how many days are they figuring out. I would rather take the risk. I'll travel on my own. We can survive only for 2 more days, after that I don't know". Vivek told me that he was arranging a taxi to leave for Lviv, as he and other students could not stay another day. The frustration in his messages was disturbing, and I asked him to stay and wait just a little longer for the buses. (He did.)

On March 5, the students of Sumy State University, in a chilling video, communicated their frustration concerning the slow evacuation response from the Indian government. They still did not have transportation to the border. Finally, Ukraine and Russia agreed to a 5-hour ceasefire. With only two more hours left, the students decided to go towards the border independently. They would be walking for hours, enduring cold weather with little food and water. “We are afraid, we have waited a lot and we cannot wait any more,” one student said in a video posted to WhatsApp. “We are risking our lives and we are moving towards the border. If anything happens to us, Mission Ganga [the rescue mission] will be the biggest failure”. Another student ends the video by saying, “This is the last video from Sumy State University students, please pray for us.” Some may have gone; we don’t know.

I do know that Vivek is still there. On March 7, Vivek texted the words 'Evacuation started' to me, along with a gif of a smiling baby. He thanked me profusely, and when I said I hardly did anything, he said 'for supporting me. Three words poignantly described the sense of relief for every student. A couple of hours later, his high spirits came crashing when the Indian embassy told him that the ceasefire had failed and the evacuation had been halted. All students were told to return to their hostels. As of 21.30 IST on March 7, they are still in Sumy.

Local collective action movements

The bureaucratic stalemate has not kept Indian migrants in other European countries from mobilising help and assistance for Indians arriving from Europe. One such group waits on the Polish-Ukrainian border, with Indians living in Poland, with a tent and an Indian flag adorning the corners with pride and hope. They are currently assisting with food, medical help, accommodation, and transport for those who arrive at the border. They are also involved in arranging buses in Sumy and Kharkiv. But without the green signal from the embassy, some of their efforts are futile.

Humanitarian consequences for Indian students

A week of war has led to fear, anxiety, and possible panic responses amongst several Indian students. In my own work as a social psychologist, I have seen the fear of the unknown lead to traumatic psychological consequences. These students will almost certainly experience post-traumatic stress concerning their experience here: Not only are they young, but they have been living in overcrowded, uncertain, cold, harrowing conditions that give rise to anxiety and depression.What is important now is that they be given psychological assistance as soon as possible to counter the effects of war and conflict. The resilience they have shown is remarkable, and that is what is keeping them going.

1. Names have been changed.