Ukraine War: Medical students Mansi Pandey and Khushi Singh return from Russia
More and more Indian students are being brought home safely in evacuation flights from conflict-hit Ukraine's neighbouring countries under Operation Ganga. However, some have returned from Russia, whose armed forces have invaded Ukraine.
Khushi Singh, 22, and eight of her classmates have retuned to Delhi from Russia. The second-year medical student said her parents were worried about the overall situation, after seeing the reports of some Indian students stranded in the crossfire in Ukraine. She said her parents factored in the possible threat of a wider conflict over President Vladimir Putin's orders on keeping Russia's nuclear forces on a high alert.
"Russia is issuing nuclear threats and the situation is scary," Ms Singh told NDTV outside the Delhi airport's arrival terminal this morning. Her father, who came to receive her, said they called her back home because they didn't want her to "get stuck like the students in Ukraine".
"The conditions there didn't seem suitable. Our parents were panicking, asking 'come home, come home'. So we thought about it. Russia has also given a kind of nuclear threat, so we thought we will leave," Ms Singh told NDTV.
Ms Singh studies in a university in western Russia's Cheboksary city. She said there were no troop movements there and the situation was normal. "But we were scared and our parents were concerned," said the Gwalior resident. "We will return after the situation in Ukraine is stable."
Her father said if a direct conflict breaks out between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, or NATO, he didn't want to risk his daughter having to go through what Indian students in Ukraine experienced.
Another student, 21-year-old Mansi Pandey, who returned from Russia, said there is a huge population of Indian medical students in Russia as well. "We have been seeing how miserable things have been in Ukraine. At the last moment they are rushing from one city to another and struggling to get to the border. If the same happened in Russia, it will be very difficult. Our parents did not want us to have the same future as the students in Ukraine," Ms Pandey, who is also from Gwalior, told NDTV.
"On my flight there were Indian students from other Russian universities. It is hard to say how many are returning from Russia but most of them are returning in small batches every day," she said.
Mr Putin held talks on Wednesday with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the urgent evacuation of Indian students trapped in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. An Indian student was killed during shelling in Kharkiv on Tuesday.