Know How Social Media Helped Indian Students Stranded in Ukraine
Know Social Media Helped Indian Students Stranded in Ukraine
Kanishk, a first-year medical student who safely reached India last week, said those who had escaped Ukraine before them helped them through social media to find escape routes.
New Delhi, Mar 09 : A video of students stranded in the war-hit Ukrainian city of Sumy holding Indian flags and threatening to take up a journey to the Russian border on foot created an uproar in national and international media, which in turn, prompted the Indian authorities to fast-track their evacuation process.
Cut to Wednesday, all the stranded students have been evacuated from the northeastern Ukrainian city.
The incident provides an apt example of how social media helped people stuck in the ongoing war involving Russia and Ukraine.
Ever since a Russian offensive began in Ukraine, social media platforms have been flooded with videos and photos by those stranded in the east European country, soldiers and even politicians.
Jisna Jiji (25), a medical student who was among a group of around 700 Indian students that decided to take up the journey to the border on foot, said social media played an important role in their evacuation.
" We were requesting authorities to evacuate us as soon as our resources started depleting and there was continuous shelling, but the requests fell on deaf ears. Frustrated by no response, we decided to post a video on social media. It went viral and within hours, we got a response from the government and now, we are being evacuated," she said.
Mobile phones in hand, soldiers and civilians are documenting the war as it unfolds.
Medical student Aousaf Hussain (25), a native of Kerala, was stuck in a metro bunker with his friends. Their resources were depleting fast and there was no sign of help coming.
So he decided to use his Instagram page, which is followed by a few thousand people, to document the day-to-day struggles in the bunker. He posted several videos, narrating sordid tales and showing buildings damaged due to continuous shelling and bombings.
In several of the videos, he detailed their life in the bunkers, describing what kind of problems they were facing and how they were arranging drinking water and food for survival.
Talking to PTI, Hussain said he started documenting his life in the bunker so that people could see the videos and come forward with help.
