Many 'dropping off the grid', amid desperate social media appeals, efforts on to trace them

New Delhi: With thousands of Indian nationals, mostly students, still stuck in Ukraine as Russia continues to invade the country –their parents and loved ones back home worried sick for their safety –many of them have now started to drop off the grid, losing contact with their family members and those they were in touch with for help. As the families of these students reach for desperate measures to try and trace their children and spread the work, Nitesh Singh, a worker for NGO Team SoS India, has started mammoth efforts with his team to document all complaints of students dropping off the grid in Ukraine as the situation in Kyiv and Kharkiv remains tense.

According to their records, Singh said that there are now over 118 students who were last reported stuck in different cities of Ukraine, who have now lost touch with their family members and are unreachable and untraceable. "We traced around four students now and found that they were running out of charge on their phones and were stuck in different border points. Some, we were able to reconnect with after they crossed into neighbouring countries," Singh said.

Team SOS India started their Ukraine operations on February 22 after making groups on social media for those stuck to reach out for help. Singh said that they are in touch with around 2,000 students across eight WhatsApp groups and about 4,000 others on a separate Telegram group. "Over 100 people on our team are working on the Ukraine situation right now and we are getting desperate calls from parents, relatives, through social media that their children are no longer reachable," Singh said. When asked whether they are trying to coordinate with Embassy officials to trace these nationals who have dropped off the grid, he said that they are too busy keeping in touch with parents and students.

"However, I would add that the students in touch with us are repeatedly saying that Embassy officials are not reachable and that there is a lot of confusion about who to ask for help," Singh said.

Several students who are in touch with Millennium Post have echoed these sentiments and said that they have had to find their own way to train stations and bus stops to find a way to the border. Most of them said they had to walk the last 10 kilometres to the border.

One student, Nirmal Kumar, who has now managed to cross into Romania after being stuck in Vinnytsia for more than two days, said, "We have been given rooms here and there is some food but we had to stand at the border for hours and there was no Embassy official in sight. Even here, all the help is coming from the local government and no Embassy officials."

Meanwhile, thousands of more students continue to be stuck in Kyiv and Kharkiv, unable to find a way to the borders. Souhardya Majumder, who managed to board a train out of the Capital, told Millennium Post, "We walked 4 km to a train station near Volzka. While we were unable to find a place for us on the scheduled free trains, we were told about some unscheduled ones and managed to board it somehow," adding that it was dumb-luck that allowed him and a few other students from Bogomolets Medical University, where he studies, to board the train.

"We don't even know how far the train will take us. It is very crowded here. Hope we find a way out," he said.

Moreover, other students stuck there said that unclear and fast-changing advisories from the Embassy are confusing them and they are unable to take a call on whether to move to train stations or not. While the Embassy had on Sunday asked students not to make a dash to train stations, on Monday, it asked students to proceed there but expect long waiting times.

In the meantime, Singh, from Team SOS, told Millennium Post that their social media channels are actively updating details of all those who are losing contact with family and accordingly updating when they are being traced. "We don't want to spread any negative messaging that these students are missing and so I want to make it clear that they are just losing touch with family members. Their families are extremely worried," Singh added as his teams continued to update on social media, making desperate appeals for help from Embassy officials to trace these Indians "lost" in Ukraine.