Koushik Dey, sitting in his bamboo-thatched room, remains certain that he will return to Ukraine by the end of this year. He also tells News18 that Ukraine will rebuild and that everything will return to normal despite the destruction.
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Koushik Dey, a resident of Brahmanpara in Udaipur district of Gomati, has set up his broadband connection. He studies medicine at the UN Karazin Kharkiv National University in Kharkiv, which had to deal with Russian airstrikes in the early stages of the so-called ‘military operation in Ukraine’.
He spent two nights in the Vokzal metro station, which was transformed into a bunker overnight. He left Kharkov on February 26 and even on the day he left there were no signs of increased hostilities, but they heard air raids. Depending on the advice of the Indian embassy in Kiev, Koushik Dey left for Lviv with three of his housemates.
“We took a train to Lviv with limited food supplies. We were dealing with a water shortage in Kharkiv. We spoke to a taxi driver in Lviv who charged us Rs 12,000 about the four of us. From there we traveled to the border with Poland where Indian officials met us and we were taken there. There were no taxis and they asked us how much they could,” Koushik said. His housemates, who shared an apartment with him, were from Madhya Pradesh and Bihar. Koushik’s belongings are still in Naukova in Kharkiv. “I can’t get them back and I have no hope of finding them,” he says.
“On reaching the Polish border I was relieved to see my other friends. We were checked at checkpoints manned by Ukrainian soldiers. I didn’t panic and I wasn’t anxious. Hostilities did not begin until a day or two later. The strikes were aimed at the rural areas, not the main city of Kharkov,” he told News18.
However, Koushik’s parents are concerned. His uncle Ganesh Dey said where he will study. “Kharkiv is reduced to rubble. Students need buildings to study. I was afraid that Russia would drop vacuum bombs. Students no longer have buildings to study,” Ganesh Dey said. His father, Kartik Dey, is relieved but worries that his son will continue to pursue his dreams of becoming a doctor.
Koushik says he is confident that peace will return and that his university administration hopes they can resume classes normally by the end of the year.
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