The Polish and Eastern Europeans including Russia are some of the most violently racist people you may ever encouter. Avoid those countries.
A student from Nigeria has recounted his four-day, 590-mile journey trying to escape war-torn Ukraine after he and hundreds of others were told they could not pass through the border by 'racist' guards.
Alexander Somto Orah, 25, spent four days trying to escape from Kyiv where he was studying at the Ukrainian capital's State University of Telecommunications.
The Nigerian native gathered his belongings and headed for the border a day after Russian forces invaded Ukraine.
But he and hundreds of other students were stopped from reaching the border of Poland by guards who said no to 'Indians, Africans and Middle Easterners', ordered to make their way to another border.
'The war made me realise that if there are human beings, there are others that are regarded differently to others,' Mr Orah said.
'I have never experienced war. I have watched videos of war and I know how crazy it can be. I don't want to be collateral damage.
'The degrees were like minus three, minus four, sometimes I felt so cold I couldn't do anything. And sometimes I would be very hungry. But I can't eat.
'I can't describe my feeling yet because it was somehow weird for me. Like, you are sleeping, from sleeping you are packing bags, from packing bags you are running.
'I started running from the 25th of last month.
'Crossing the Ukraine border to Poland was devastating because of the discrimination. The first discrimination was at Kyiv train station.
'They were allowing only women and children, I said "OK, that's fine", but I don't see you taking the other African women and the other Middle Eastern women, they are pregnant.
'And they were actually in the cold, some with their kids. We've been here for three days. We're dying of cold.'
A shocking video taken by Alexander at the Polish Ukranian border shows crowds of Nigerian students shouting at officials to let them through.
The officials, who are wearing hi-vis vests in the videos, are shown pointing large guns at the crowds who can be heard shouting, 'We've been here for three days, we're dying of cold'.
The clip cuts to the shocking moment a white van reversing away from the crowds of refugees before driving towards them to push them back.
'We were shouting and we started moving forward. They called for backup, which is the police. When the police came, the police also stood in a shooting position, just like the other one, and he wanted to shoot us,' Mr Orah said.
'We were telling him that he should not try to shoot us because we didn't commit a crime, we didn't live in your country illegally.'
After more back-and-forth with police and officials at the border of Poland, Alexander explained that they finally got to the border, only to be told that it was closed.
This left the 25-year-old and the rest of the crowd stranded: 'We have to sleep outside again with the snow and everything.
'The next day, they told us to form a line, and the line we formed it.
'After some hours in the morning, that's around 9 to 11, then by 12, one man in black came and told us, "Indians, Africans and Middle Easterners should leave here and go to another border,", which is the Romanian border.
'We told him that we could not do this thing again. We have been on the road for three days, and we cannot go back.
'I felt like maybe someone might die here, because there are some people fainting, and there was no blanket so we were just covering ourselves with our clothes and anything we could find.'
Alexander finally made it through the border four days after he left Kyiv.
If the war keeps going on. They will run out money too and probably run out soldiers. I think Putin had his purpose for the invasion but he should have suggested dialogue or negotiation first. His plan of invasion is wack too. You don't destroy your leverage before asking for negotiation. You have destroyed Ukraine before asking for dialogue and cease fire. It's almost over cos Ukrainians can't do so now cos they have nothing to protect again. I don't think Ukraine will ever surrender now.
PeaceJoyLove: This is too late. NATO has messed up. Ukraine should work out peaceful terms with their brother. That's it. And they should do it without NATO and the US.
If this is the beginning of a new USSR, so be it. Na NATO messed up. Period!
Despite his bombastic rhetoric, and what looks like Botox, the strain is showing on Vladimir Putin's face.
His dream of a lightning war - Kyiv falling in two days and the rest of Ukraine within two weeks - has become a nightmare.
The evidence is everywhere: a massive convoy bogged down in the mud, smoking hulks of aircraft shot down by Ukrainian forces, and Russian artillery resorting to shelling apartment blocks and hospitals.
Meanwhile, the invaders have even taken to laying landmines in humanitarian corridors and gunning down fleeing families - it is frightened and demoralised soldiers, unable to prevail on the battlefield, who commit such crimes.
Yesterday came another, even more telling sign that Putin is rattled.
In a surprise move, Russia announced that it would stop its onslaught 'in a moment' if Ukraine agrees to a raft of extraordinary demands.
It must cease military action, change its constitution to enshrine neutrality, acknowledge the Crimea as Russian territory, and recognise the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk as independent territories.
So what is behind this abrupt about-turn?
Two weeks ago, Putin would have scoffed at the notion that he might offer an olive branch - albeit a rotten one - just ten days after sending troops into Ukraine.
So why is he proffering it now? Is it because he fears that his armed forces are incapable of completing their mission successfully?
On the face of it, that seems unlikely. Ukraine's defence expenditure is one tenth the size of Russia's.
The invader's army is 280,000-strong, compared with Ukraine's complement of 170,000 troops.
But war is not just a numbers game.
Ukraine's soldiers are well-trained and highly motivated to defend their country under the leadership of their charismatic president Volodymyr Zelensky.
Many have combat experience gained from battles against Russian troops in Donetsk and Lugansk in 2014 and they are backed by 100,000 reservists, and territorial defence forces that include at least 100,000 veterans and an ever-increasing number of civilian volunteers.
By contrast, 40 per cent of Russian soldiers are conscripts, many of whom have had little training.
And while Putin has the advantage in military hardware, superior firepower does not always win the day, as we have seen in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
What really proves decisive in wars is the will to win: the victor is the one who exhausts the other side, sapping their morale to the point that they can no longer resist.
No one knows this better than Putin, a former member of the KGB, who is behaving like a KGB interrogator with a prisoner tied to a chair: withhold food and water, deny sleep and light, then torture until they submit.
In the case of Ukraine, this means pulverising cities with relentless bombing, and cutting off the vital supplies they require to survive.
But Ukraine is stubbornly resisting these efforts. And the longer it holds out, the greater the chance that it is Russia that will break.
Now even Britain's most senior military man considers it a possibility.
When the Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, was asked at the weekend whether a Russian takeover of Ukraine was still inevitable, his answer was 'No'.
'Russia is suffering, Russia is an isolated power,' he said.
'It is less powerful than it was ten days ago. Some of the lead elements of Russian forces have been decimated by the Ukrainian response.'
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken dismissed the idea that Russia could ever successfully occupy Ukraine and install a puppet regime: 'Forty five million Ukrainians are going to reject that one way or the other.'
He is right. The longer and more brutal the conflict, the stiffer Ukrainian resistance will be.
And with the West supplying weaponry, Ukrainians could wage a guerrilla war for years that would demoralise Russian troops and eventually wear down their resolve.
Putin assumed that Ukraine would quickly collapse in the face of his invasion and that the West would, after some token protests, ultimately shrug and accept it just as they had the annexation of the Crimea in 2014.
But in Crimea, many people identify as Russian and welcomed them.
In Ukraine, the population is proudly independent and has no desire to be gobbled up by an economically stagnant, corrupt old Russian bear.
Ukraine's courageous resistance has shocked him, as has the reaction of the Western powers, which belatedly discovered their backbones and imposed sanctions that have sparked an economic crisis in Russia, which will undermine its military effort.
The longer the war in Ukraine goes on, the greater the prospect of economic collapse at home. Neither military failure, nor economic ruin, bodes well for Putin.
The Kremlin's brutal clampdown on free speech, which keeps any genuine reporting of the war off the TV news, might mean that some people are fooled. But the truth can't be kept from them forever.
As more Russian conscripts return home and report that the Ukrainians haven't welcomed the Russian 'liberators' but fiercely opposed their invasion and occupation, Russian public opinion will turn against Putin.
Word of mouth is more powerful than any other news source and defies censorship. People will start to hear that their neighbour's 19-year-old conscript son has returned home from 'exercise' without a leg, or not at all.
The truth about Putin's war will be impossible to hide.
He can massage the statistics - claiming 498 Russian troops have been killed when the true number may be as high as 10,000 - but no amount of propaganda can alter the dire situation on the ground.
How long before his military chiefs start questioning whether the only way to extricate themselves and their men from this mess is to get rid of the man who created it?
Equally worrying for him are rumours of discontent within the FSB, Russian's feared spy agency and successor to the infamous KGB.
A report, supposedly by an FSB analyst, that was leaked at the weekend described the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a 'total failure', concluding: 'Russia has no way out. There are no options for a possible victory, only defeat.'
Whether or not the report is genuine, the sentiments ring true.
And if both the people who are fighting Putin's war and those whose role is to keep him in power are losing faith in him, he is in trouble.
Putin, as I have written on these pages before, is not mad.
He can see that things have gone badly and is casting around for a face-saving exit plan. For that reason, I think his peace plan represents a genuine offer.
So will Ukraine accept it? The devil is in the detail.
If the Russians are offering to withdraw to the areas in the East held by the separatist rebels since 2014, that might be one thing.
But if Putin wants to hold on to the whole of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, that is unthinkable.
People there are fighting bravely to resist the Russians. They will not want to be ruled by them.
If Ukraine agrees to Putin's conditions, it is resigning itself to never joining Nato's protective umbrella and laying itself open to the possibility that Putin could regroup and try again in a few years' time.
No one could blame Ukraine if they decided to accept the offer in order to save civilian lives.
But it would be a bitter pill, and from what we have seen of Zelensky and his courageous citizens they will not want to swallow it.
Putin will have to do better than this attempt to blackmail Ukraine into a fragile peace that he cannot be trusted to keep.
Mark Galeotti is Honorary Professor at the University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies, and author of We Need To Talk About Putin
Telecom giant Rostelecom, Russian search engine Yandex, and carriers MegaFon and VEON are all supported by US-based Cogent Communications.
An internet provider has suspended Russian customers due to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
In a memo to Russian customers, reported by the Washington Post, US-based Cogent Communications said that “economic sanctions” and “the increasingly uncertain security situation” meant they could not continue serving customers.
Chief executive Dave Schaeffer said the company did not want to keep ordinary Russians off the Internet, but had to take precautions to stop Russian government using Cogent’s networks to launch cyberattacks or deliver propaganda.
“Our goal is not to hurt anyone. It’s just to not empower the Russian government to have another tool in their war chest,” he said. Cogent did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent before time of publication.
Some of the company’s Russian customers reportedly include the state-backed telecom giant Rostelecom, Russian search engine Yandex, and two of Russia’s carriers MegaFon and VEON.
“Disconnecting their customers in Russia will not disconnect Russia, but it will reduce the amount of overall bandwidth available for international connectivity. This reduction in bandwidth may lead to congestion as the remaining international carriers try to pick up the slack,” wrote Doug Mandory, director of internet analysis at Kentik.
Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, has been calling for every major technology company to impose restrictions on Russia.
Mr Fedorov urged Samsung to block access to Samsung Pay and the Galaxy Store to send a message against “bloody authoritarian aggression”, while calling on Visa and Mastercard to completely exit from the country alongside Apple Pay and Google Pay.
He has even for Sony and Microsoft to remove Xbox and PlayStation support from Russian citizens to prove that they “support human values”.
YouTube has pulled RT, Sputnik, and other news channels from its platform, while Meta is restricting their access on Facebook and Instagram too. In response, Russia is limiting access to Facebook but not the more popular Instagram for citizens.
“I am very afraid of this,” said Mikhail Klimarev, executive director of the Internet Protection Society, told the Washington Post.
“I would like to convey to people all over the world that if you turn off the internet in Russia, then this means cutting off 140 million people from at least some truthful information. As long as the internet exists, people can find out the truth. There will be no internet – all people in Russia will only listen to propaganda.”
Similarly, in response to Mr Federov has even gone as far as to demand that Russia is sectioned off from the global internet entirely, ICANN chief Göran Marby said that “the internet is a decentralized system” and that its “mission does not extend to taking punitive actions, issuing sanctions, or restricting access against segments of the internet – regardless of the provocations”.
It is possible that further restrictions could isolate Russia further, making it harder for average citizens to access news about the invasion.
Anonymous hacked streaming services and TV news channels in Russia to broadcast footage of the country’s war with Ukraine amid a heavy clampdown on information by Vladimir Putin’s government, according to reports.
Early on Monday, the hacking group, which identifies itself as activists from around the world, posted that it was involved in the “biggest Anonymous op ever seen” of hacking Russian news channels like Russia 24, Channel One, and Moscow 24, including streaming sites, to show footage of Russia’s actions in Ukraine as the invasion entered the 12th day.
“The hacking collective #Anonymous hacked into the Russian streaming services Wink and Ivi (like Netflix) and live TV channels Russia 24, Channel One, Moscow 24 to broadcast war footage from Ukraine [today],” it announced on Twitter with video footage.
The footage showed a message at the end, stating that “ordinary Russians are against the war” and called for Russians to oppose the attack on Ukraine.
Kyiv Independent, a Ukrainian news organisation, confirmed the hacking
Soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, the collective of hackers claimed to be in a “cyber war against the Russian government”. The group has taken responsibility for several cyberattacks, including shutting down the Kremlin’s official website on 26 February.
The group’s targets in the past have included the CIA, the Church of Scientology, and the Islamic State.
The latest move of targeting Russian news services came after it raised alarm on Twitter for the “need to keep the Russian people connected to the global community” in response to Russia’s active clampdown against information on the Ukraine invasion.
The Russian government has intensified censorship since the war began, stifling coverage by blocking access to Facebook and major foreign news outlets and arresting hundreds of activists who protested against the invasion.
Putin miscalculated, he gave the west the perfect opportunity on a platter of gold to drain and decapitate the Russian military without any direct confrontation.
The west will drain him militarily and economically in Ukraine while at the same time cripple him politically, economically and financially back home in Russia with the crippling sanctions.
There are large protests taking place in Russia already and the sanctions are not even bitting yet.
Russia is already a very poor country, but it's about to be even poorer many times over.. Putin is fighting 2 wars, one at home in Russia and another in Ukraine.
Ukrainians and the West are not fools, they know Russia will eventually enter the Ukrainian capital, but they won't leave alive, it's a death trap for the Russians.
NEAR UKRAINE’S BORDER — Some 14 wide-bodied aircraft transported a bristling array of Javelin antitank missiles, rocket launchers, guns and ammunition to an airfield near Ukraine’s border on Friday, as the United States and European allies ramped up their efforts to give the Ukrainian military a leg up in battling a foreign enemy that far outguns it.
The top U.S. military adviser to President Biden inspected the weapons transfer operation in an unannounced trip, meeting with troops and personnel from 22 countries who were working around the clock to unload the armaments for transport by land to the Ukrainian forces.
The American weaponry, which included the Javelins as well as small arms and munitions, was part of a $350 million package that Mr. Biden authorized on Saturday; within two days, one official said, the deliveries were landing at an airfield near the border that can process 17 airplanes a day. What began as a trickle — with only two or three planes arriving a day — is now a steady flow, the official said, with 14 loads from one airfield alone.
Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, included a stop at the airfield as part of a trip to the region. As he spoke to troops, cargos of Javelins rolled behind him. Nearby, two C-17s, the enormous cargo workhorses of the U.S. Air Force, sat on the tarmac.
The United States has delivered nearly 70 percent of the $350 million package to Ukraine’s military, a senior Pentagon official said on Friday. It expects to complete the entire shipment in the next week or so.
The shipment of weapons — which also includes Stinger antiaircraft missiles from U.S. military stockpiles, mostly in Germany — represents the largest single authorized transfer of arms from U.S. military warehouses to another country, the Pentagon official said.
U.S. officials said the weaponry, equipment and other war matériel were being flown to neighboring countries like Poland and Romania and then shipped over land into western Ukraine to commanders for distribution across the country.
The weapons have quickly found their way into the hands of Ukrainian soldiers, who are using them to fight the advancing Russian force, U.S. officials said on Friday.
“All of us have been tremendously impressed by how effectively the Ukrainian armed forces have been using the equipment that we’ve provided them,” said the senior Pentagon official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters. “Kremlin watchers have also been surprised by this, and how they have slowed the Russian advance and performed extremely well on the battlefield.”
A special coordination cell at the U.S. military’s European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, is managing the torrent of weapons and equipment from the United States and at least 14 other countries, including Britain, Canada and Lithuania, the Pentagon official said.
Previous arms drawdowns, as the government calls shipments taken from existing U.S. military stocks, have taken weeks or months to wend their way through the Washington bureaucracy and then to delivery in the field.
A $60 million arms package to Ukraine announced in August, for example, was not completed until November. The last portions of a $200 million weapons package announced in late December were still trickling into Ukraine, the Pentagon official said.
Altogether, the United States has provided more than $3 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since 2014, when Russia first invaded parts of the country. About $1 billion of that has been sent in the past year, under the Biden administration.
Russian fighter-bombers and ground forces have so far been too busy with a stiff resistance from Ukrainian air and land forces to attack the arms deliveries moving into western Ukraine. But American analysts warn that could quickly shift, especially as Russian forces in the south and east have picked up momentum in recent days. A northern advance on Kyiv, the capital, and Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, remained largely stalled, Pentagon officials said.
The weapons also include rocket launchers from the Dutch, Javelins from the Estonians, Stinger surface-to-air missiles from the Germans, Poles and Latvians, and machine guns and sniper rifles from the Czechs.
Because of concern over drawing Russian attention, reporters accompanying General Milley were not permitted to disclose exactly where along Ukraine’s border the aircraft were unloading.
General Milley also traveled to a training field near Nowa Deba, in southern Poland, where paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne have been training with Polish troops. The coordination is part of Mr. Biden’s effort to reassure Eastern European allies — and assure President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — that while NATO is not sending troops into Ukraine, which is not a member of the alliance, it will fight any incursion into the territory of a NATO member.
Officials were adamant that NATO was standing up to Mr. Putin. “NATO is more unified than I’ve ever seen NATO unified before,” Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, the commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, told reporters at the training center. “I’ve been working since I was a second lieutenant, in 1988, and I can tell you I’ve never seen the resolve, and the practical expression of combat readiness, as I’ve seen in the alliance ground forces right now. It’s remarkable.”
Shortly after meeting with troops at Nowa Deba, General Milley flew by helicopter to Rzeszow, Poland, the headquarters of the 82nd Airborne in the country, which, he said, was deployed to “deter any further territorial aggression by Russia.”
Maj. Gen. Chris Donahue, who commanded the U.S. evacuation from Afghanistan after Kabul fell to the Taliban in August and who is the commanding general of the 82nd Airborne, said the Polish headquarters could temporarily house some 2,500 evacuees from Ukraine. The site, which is in an arena, is meant to serve as a staging ground for evacuees who are citizens of the United States and other NATO countries. Bunk beds filled the room, most of them empty.
Officials said that while there had been a deluge of Ukrainian refugees crossing the border, the number of American evacuees was small. Most American citizens who left Ukraine traveled by air or crossed at other areas along Ukraine’s borders, the officials said.
At an operations center in the arena, Polish border guards, American intelligence officials, paratroopers and State Department desk officers huddled over maps of Ukraine.
“They were smart to bring in all U.S. government agencies and international partners working on solutions for Ukraine,” said Col. Dave Butler, a spokesman for General Milley.
One of Vladimir Putin’s central justifications for launching a war against Ukraine rests on his claims that the two countries constitute one people and that Ukraine's status as an independent state is illegitimate.
“Ukraine is not just a neighboring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space,” Putin said Monday in an address to his country in the build up to Thursday’s invasion.
Russians and Ukrainians are now retracing much of the history that has long been at the core of the tension between the two former Soviet Republics.
Among the most significant events being revisited is what is known as the Holodomor, a manufactured famine that ripped through and killed millions in Ukraine in the early 1930s when it was part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, better known as the Soviet Union.
What is the Holodomor and what caused it?
The Holodomor translates roughly to “death by hunger” in Ukrainian. It is how Ukrainians refer to the mass starvation deaths of millions in Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. The Holodomor was part of a larger famine that swept the Soviet Union as Stalin collectivized the agricultural economy by taking over small farms and prohibiting independent farmers from selling their crops. But specific policy decisions targeting Ukraine intensified the famine there, leading Ukraine and many nations to recognize the Holodomor as a genocide. It’s held that Stalin allowed Ukrainians to starve in order to quash Ukrainian resistance to the reorganization of its farms.
When did the Holodomor start?
The Holodomor took place from 1931 to 1932.
Did Stalin deny the Holodomor?
Stalin and the Soviet Union never recognized the Holodomor as a genocide. Discussion of the event was heavily repressed inside the Soviet Union and the USSR undertook a campaign to conceal the atrocity from the rest of the world.
As Anne Applebaum reported in the Atlantic, journalists in the Soviet Union were subject to intense censure from Moscow. Western reporters, including New York Times reporter Walter Duranty, a Pulitzer-prize winner, downplayed the situation in Ukraine. “Conditions are bad, but there is no famine,” he infamously wrote in one 1933 story.
The present-day Russian government minimizes what happened. In 2017, Russian Spokesperson Maria Zakharova told reporters that the characterization of the starvation as a genocide “contradicts historical facts.”
How many people died in the Holodomor?
Scholars have estimated that anywhere from 3 to 7 million people died.
When is Holodomor Remembrance Day?
Holodomor Remembrance day is observed on the final Saturday of November.
Does the United States recognize the Holodomor?
The United States opened in 2015 a memorial for the Holodomor on the National Mall in DC, and the Obama and Biden White Houses have issued remembrance statements on Holodomor Remembrance Day. But the United states has been stopped short of calling the Holodomor a genocide, even as several countries, including Canada, recognize it as such.
Last year, Biden released a statement that said the millions of Ukrainians who died were “victims of the brutal policies and deliberate acts of the regime of Joseph Stalin.”
“As we remember the pain and the victims of the Holodomor,’ the statement read. “the United States also reaffirms our commitment to the people of Ukraine today and our unwavering support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
Images from the Russian invasion: 'Brutal act of war': Photos of Russia invading Ukraine show mass evacuations, rockets
Ukrainian cities under attack: Ukraine-Russia crisis: How do you pronounce Donetsk? And is it Kyiv or Kiev?
Why is the Holodomor important?
Despite the death of millions resulting from deliberate policy decisions by Stalin's regime, the Holodomor isn’t widely known in the United States. But it is a key part to understanding the deep divisions between Russia and Ukraine. It marks an early and brutal example in what many Ukrainians say is a long history of Moscow’s hostility toward its southwestern neighbor.
Medical student from southern state of Karnataka killed by shelling in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, India’s foreign ministry says.
An Indian student has been killed in shelling in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, India’s foreign ministry says, as criticism over New Delhi’s evacuation of students from the war-torn country mounts.
“Foreign Secretary is calling in Ambassadors of Russia and Ukraine to reiterate our demand for urgent safe passage for Indian nationals who are still in Kharkiv and cities in other conflict zones,” ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi posted on Twitter on Tuesday.
Russian forces are firing artillery and laying siege to Kharkiv and other major cities, a Ukrainian official said, as the invasion of the former Soviet republic entered its sixth day.
Indian media reports said the student, identified as Naveen Shekharappa, belonged to the southern state of Karnataka’s Haveri district and studied medicine in Ukraine.
The student died while he was trying to find his way out of Kharkiv, his roommate told India’s NDTV network.
“He lived near the governor’s house and had been standing in the queue for food. Suddenly there was an air strike that blew up the governor’s house and he was killed,” Pooja Praharaj, a student coordinator in Kharkiv, told NDTV.
A Ukrainian woman picked up his phone, according to the student coordinator. “Speaking from his phone, she said the owner of this phone is being taken to the morgue,” Praharaj said.
Indians make up about a quarter of the 76,000 foreign students in Ukraine, by far the largest number, according to Ukrainian government data.
New Delhi has evacuated about 4,000 Indians in the last month, but some 16,000 remain trapped, according to the latest data from India’s foreign ministry.
Earlier on Tuesday, the Indian embassy in Ukraine also issued an advisory, asking the Indian students to “leave Kyiv urgently”.
The Indian government has dispatched four federal ministers to Ukraine’s neighbouring countries to assist in the rescue efforts. ‘Screaming in terror’
But many stranded students in Ukraine have criticised the Indian government’s rescue efforts as they released a slew of videos on social media highlighting their plight.
According to Indian media, some Indian students are being prevented from crossing into neighbouring countries, with border guards reportedly refusing to let them pass and demanding money.
“I was standing near the Ukrainian border, awaiting my turn to enter Romania when I saw a few guards point guns at Indian students and start abusing them in their language,” the Times of India quoted one student as saying.
“Students, who were already scared, started screaming in terror.”
The Hindustan Times quoted Ishika Sarkar, a student in eastern Ukraine, saying in a video that Indians in the area were in bunkers and running short of food.
“(We) have been asked to reach the western border, which is impossible for us because the connecting bridges have been blown up due to bombardment… but we are not getting any kind of help in Ukraine,” he said.
Aruj Raj, a student in Kharkiv, told the newspaper that he has been in a hostel bunker with 400 other Indian students since Thursday.
“There is so much bombing happening outside. We can see street fighting through our windows. The city is still under curfew. It is impossible for us to step outside. We hardly have anything left to eat or drink,” he said.
India’s main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday slammed the government for not coming up with “a strategic plan for safe evacuation” of Indian students in Ukraine.
It may still happen, through the Turkish president is discussing and make make a decision later today.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan didn't tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Turkey would close the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to Russian warships, a senior Turkish official told Middle East Eye on Saturday.
"President Erdogan didn't promise to close the straits," the official, who is directly familiar with the call, said. "Turkey hasn't made a decision to close the straits to Russian ships yet."
The statement contradicted an earlier tweet by Zelensky, which was posted following his telephone conversation with Erdogan.
"I thank my friend Mr President of Turkey @RTErdogan and the people of Turkey for their strong support," Zelensky tweeted.
"The ban on the passage of Russian warships to the Black Sea and significant military and humanitarian support for Ukraine are extremely important today. The people of Ukraine will never forget that!" the Ukrainian leader continued.
Zelensky's tweet may have been an effort to force Ankara's hand.
Erdogan spoke to Zelensky on Saturday, offering reassurance that Ankara was making efforts for an immediate ceasefire, as well as his condolences over the loss of lives in the Russian attack, according to a Turkish presidency statement.
The statement made no mention of the Black Sea in the presidents' conversation.
Under the 1936 Montreux Convention, Turkey has control over the passage of vessels between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, making it an essential player in the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
Turkish foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu earlier this week said that Russia would still be able to send its ships through the straits even Turkey closes them.
"Under Montreux Convention on straits, Russia has a right to return its ships to its ports in Black Sea," Cavusoglu said in a TV interview. "Even in the wartime, Russia has a right to do it."
Foreign Affairs / Unbiased Expert Military Analysis On The Russian Ukraine Strategy (20 min Video) by NigeriaNawa: 10:44pm On Mar 09, 2022 
