Naveen Shekharappa Gyanagouda, a young medical student from Karnataka, was killed in Russian shelling in Ukraine’s Kharkiv on Tuesday, becoming the first Indian casualty of an invasion his country will not condemn.
Kharkiv is located in Ukraine’s northeast, neighbouring the breakaway Donbass region that Moscow recognised last week as independent.
In his early twenties, Naveen was a fourth-year student of Kharkiv National Medical University in Ukraine’s second largest city.
Naveen was confirmed killed by external affairs ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi on Tuesday afternoon without naming him. By the time the official confirmation came, the news had already broken as students stranded in Ukraine began sharing the information on social media.
Stating that the ministry is in touch with his family, Bagchi further tweeted: “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. Similar action is also being undertaken by our Ambassadors in Russia and Ukraine.”
Naveen had gone to buy groceries for the group of students he was holed up with in a bunker when he was killed in the shelling on Tuesday morning in Ukraine.
Since Kharkiv is in the eastern part of Ukraine that is the main conflict zone near the Russian border, the students have to either stay put or travel across the country to the western parts to reach the border crossing points with Poland, Hungary, Romania and the Slovak Republic.
Amid complaints from students stuck in Kharkiv and Sumy in eastern Ukraine that the Indian embassy had abandoned them, foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla in a late-night briefing said an Indian team had been positioned in the Russian city of Belgorod close to the Ukrainian border in case a situation evolved where both Ukraine and Russia were able to assure safe passage. However, at present, the conflict situation in and around Kharkiv and nearby cities remains an obstacle, he added.
On the request of Naveen’s father that his body be brought back, the foreign secretary said efforts would be made to do so, along with evacuating Indians stranded in the conflict zone. “The body has been taken to the university morgue and has been identified,” Shringla said.
Naveen was killed on a day the embassy in Kyiv issued an urgent advisory to Indians in the Ukrainian capital to leave right away.
“All Indian nationals, including students, are advised to leave Kyiv urgently today. Preferably by available trains or through any other means available,” the embassy said as Russia launched a fresh onslaught on the capital on Monday.
For the evacuation, four more flights on Tuesday left countries bordering Ukraine with stranded Indians. In all, 12,000 of the estimated 22,000 Indians in Ukraine have left the country, Shringla said. That is about 60 per cent of Indians there.
Of the remaining 10,000, about half have either reached the western borders of Ukraine or are on their way. The others are stuck in the conflict zones of Kharkiv, Sumy and Odessa down south.
The government has scheduled 26 evacuation flights over the next three days, including a C70 Indian Air Force flight that will fly out to Romania on Wednesday morning. Simultaneously, India is also sending humanitarian aid to Ukraine — the first consignment left for Poland on Tuesday and another will head there on Wednesday.
All the four Union ministers who have been sent as special envoys to four countries bordering Ukraine to coordinate and oversee the evacuation have left for their respective destinations. Union minister of state V.K. Singh was the first to arrive and meet Indians awaiting evacuation flights in Poland.
Other private carriers too have decided to join Operation Ganga. Minister Kiren Rijiju flew on SpiceJet to his assigned country, Slovakia, and hailed the airline for stepping up.
