‘We Are Lucky’: These Odisha Students Took Flight Out Of Kyiv A Day Before Russia Attack

Berhampur: While scores of students from Odisha remain in Ukraine and hope to be on an Air India evacuation flight as early as possible, D Adarsh Patra and Biswambar Badatya, who are from Berhampur, and Mihir Ranjan Dalai of Puri consider themselves lucky.

All of them, who are third-year medical students at Kharkiv National University, managed to board a flight a day before Russia invaded Ukraine and are now home. All three shared a flat in Ukraine.

According to them, tension was building up for the past one month. “After the situation started worsening, we tried to book tickets to India and managed bookings for February 23 from Kyiv to Doha,” they said.

“We boarded the flight from Kyiv at 9 pm on Wednesday to Doha airport, where we spent about 18 hours. From there we flew to Mumbai and then to Bhubaneswar, from where we went to our hometowns. We learnt about Russia’s attack during the layover in Doha,” Patra (21) was quoted as saying by a news report.

“A day after we left, we learnt that Ukraine’s airspace has been closed,” said Badatya, realising how lucky they were.

According to reports, some more students from Odisha who managed to board flights out of Kyiv before the Russian invasion began also arrived in Bhubaneswar on Sunday.

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