‘Ran through the forest as explosions roared…kept kitchen knives’: Indians in Ukraine bunkers

“We have reached the point beyond extreme fear, there isn’t anything left to feel. There is an empty silence inside me. If I survive, then that will be great, but if I don’t then also it's okay. I have done everything in my power to survive. But we’ve reached the end of our rope now. There is nothing more that we can do.”

Avantika, 21, spent her first night in a makeshift bunker on February 24. The bunker was originally the hostel gym at Kyiv Medical University, but now holds over 300 terrified Indian students, waiting to be evacuated.

Over 500 km away from the Polish border, where Indians have been waiting to get out of Ukraine, Avantika said that she wants the Indian embassy to send buses to locations like hers where there are a lot of Indian students together so that they can all be evacuated.

The Ukrainian airspace has been shut to civil aircraft operations since February 24 – evacuation flights are operating out of Romania’s capital Bucharest and Hungarian capital Budapest. Around 20,000 Indians, most of them students, are currently stranded in the eastern European nation as Russian forces advance.

Citing officials, PTI reported that Air India’s first evacuation flight departed from Bucharest on Saturday afternoon for Mumbai with 219 Indians; another flight departed from Delhi is expected to land in Bucharest in the evening.

However, Avantika’s voice was heavy as hope began to fade.

‘I ran through the forest as explosions roared behind me’

Avantika was woken up at 4.30 am on February 24 by frantic calls from her family in Uttarakhand. Kyiv was going to be attacked, they told her.

“There was no time to process this degree of danger. So I decided to pack a small backpack with some clothes and my travel documents, and spend the remainder of my time here [in the bunker] with the other Indian students.”

The reason she felt safer in the basement than her apartment, she said, was because her apartment was in a completely residential area and not a lot of students live there.

“The Ukrianians who lived there had already left and the ones remaining had taken up arms. So we knew that this area was no longer a neutral civilian zone and the Russian army would definitely attack them, and we would also be harmed in the crossfire,” she said.

She therefore decided that it would be safer to be in a hostel basement with “Indian students as India’s relationship with Russia is good. We hoped that this would be enough to keep us safe, but anything can happen.”

Avantika finally left her apartment at 9 am and went to the department store close to her apartment to stock up on rations. “I saw that there were a lot of police and army personnel on the streets. I saw citizens going to take up weapons to fight for Ukraine. I tried to take a video of what was happening but they started getting very angry and began accusing me of trying to send information to the other side. So I immediately ran away from there.”

Avantika then decided to head towards the hostel. “A route that normally would take me 15 minutes took me an hour. I ran through the forest as the explosions roared behind me and I was petrified. I wanted to avoid any airstrikes which is why I chose the forest route.”

The bunker

When she arrived at the gym-turned-bunker in the morning, there were about 150 students there. The situation was quite bad, she said, as most of their food had finished. The number of students in the bunker rose to above 300 by nightfall.

“The basement is very small, because it used to be a gym for the hostel and the hostel is also very small. It isn’t meant to hold 300 people at a time. Everyone is sitting stuck to each other, there is absolutely no space to lie down. There are students here who don't have a place to sit in the basement and are just standing just outside, so that they can run inside if something happens. They want to be close so that if we are evacuated then we can all be together,” Avantika said.

With sub-zero temperatures in Kyiv, she said that the ventilation in the basement had made it even colder. The toilets were also outside the basement which meant that they would have to go overground each time. While there is electricity, the main supply is shut every time they hear a missile or jet. The drinking water in the hostel has completely finished.

Describing her first night in the bunker, she said she spent it in fear and silence.

“There was a lot of panic about what was going to happen with us. Everyone was very stressed out and the mood in the bunker was tense.We had more or less come to terms with our situation, that there was no hope for us. What can you do about the fact that you will not be saved? You cannot challenge it, there’s nothing you can do to change it. So you just sit with it, in silence. Which is what we did,” she said.

However, she said that even though they know what their reality was, and that the worst possible outcome was a tangible possibility, they could not let their parents know that. “Despite what we felt, we consoled our parents, told them that things aren’t as bad as they are being portrayed. That we are together in a bunker and safe. But we know what the truth is.”

“Nobody slept even a little bit that night and even the smallest sound would startle everyone. We were over 300 students just sitting on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, in complete silence,” Avantika said.

February 25 was different, she said. The students had seen pictures of 40 students being evacuated by bus to Poland.

“You can see and feel the difference that that sliver of hope has made in the bunker. The effect that this slight relief has had is palpable. We all finally started talking to each other and the mood is now normal. Till yesterday, we had all truly given up hope. But today it is different. Today, there is hope.”

‘An impossible choice’

There was a junior from Avantika’s school from her hometown in Uttrakhand who she knew in Kyiv, however, she said that he was trapped in a bunker. She said, “He called me and said, ‘Di, I don’t have any food left.’ I told him to come to the hostel but he said that he cannot come here because it is very unsafe outside. He is trapped there.”

Avantika added that there are Indian students whose apartments are far away from bunkers or hostels. “They are faced with an impossible choice: they cannot leave their apartments even though they don't feel safe there because it is even more unsafe to travel a long distance. Another factor is that most of the bunkers are filled with Ukrainian locals who will want to keep the bunker space for themselves. Why would they give an outsider space when they are under threat as well?”

Another Indian student caught in such a situation is 21-year-old Muhammad Afridi Shoaib. There were air raid alerts all night in his city in Vinnytsia and he had not slept for a minute.

“We have a bunker in our university basement but it is full. How are we supposed to go? It is currently 7 am and after every half an hour or one hour the sirens are going on. So we have decided to stay in my room on the second floor.”

Students from all floors of the apartment complex stayed the night in Afridi’s room. “The embassy has told us to stay where we are. They keep telling us that we are safe. How are we safe? We are girls and boys here, and we are in a constant state of terror. We had to keep guard of the hostel through the night but we didn’t have any weapons to protect ourselves. So we have kept kitchen knives with us.”

There are many aspects that frighten Afridi. The entire city has been put on red alert and he saw that shops were being looted. He read that a Ukrainian man had slit another’s throat for money. “There were two Russian spies who were caught outside our building in Ukrainian army uniform, and they were marking buildings. There is absolute chaos and it won’t be long before we are robbed and killed as well. We want to get out before it’s too late.”

About how they plan to leave, Afridi said he is tired of waiting for empty responses from the embassy and the student contractors and was going to take matters into his own hands.

“There are a few of us who know how to drive. We are trying to get in touch with locals to hire mini buses from or any kind of vehicle really. We don’t have contacts but we are doing what we can, before it’s too late. We have already printed out the Indian flag to paste onto the windshield. The embassy had said yesterday that they were evacuating first and second year students by train yesterday, but at the end all of us ran to the train station to try and get on the train. The train eventually did not leave and I had to come back.”

Talking about the cold, Afridi said that it doesn’t bother him. “We are now used to the cold. However, yesterday we had to run around the railway station. We had to be in minus five and minus six degrees for hours, but we couldn’t really help it.”

‘All we can do is wait’

Afridi said that the only source of calm in this storm was the community of students in the apartment complex. “We take care of each other and have vowed to work together to survive this. We haven't told our parents that we are in this grave danger because they will panic. So we have just told them that danger is there but there is nothing to worry about. But again, I don’t believe that.”

He said one of the student contractors had told them today that they were going to be evacuated to a refugee camp in Poland, but there was no further information about how that was going to happen. “All we can do is wait.”

Avantika’s friends are also a source of comfort to her. However, her heart goes out to the local Ukrainians.

“Right now everyone is looking out for themselves. Nobody is willing to share rations because we don’t know when we will get food or water again. For us, at least we know that there is a possibility that we may be evacuated, but who is going to evacuate them. This is their country. I watched them take their infants and whatever little food that they could manage and run into the bunkers, hoping that they were spared.”

Avantika said she was thankful to locals for keeping the stores open. “They could have shut the stores and left us to starve, but they are still running the stores. So our seniors take turns and when they think it’s safe they go and get some things for us to eat.”

About what she thinks to make herself feel safe in the bunker, where she can still hear the explosions outside, she said, “I live near Kedarnath and the only time that so many people gather together at home is when there is a wedding. But this is the furthest thing from joy and celebration. I have never even seen a small skirmish before…I miss the peace and quiet of home. All I want is to see my mother and father again. I cannot put into words just how worried they are. I just want to be with them, nothing else matters to me.”