'Even if we go back... Ukraine won't be the same again'

Spending a week huddled in bunkers and walking miles to the nearest border in freezing weather is not everyone's cup of tea.

So, when students from Kharkiv, Lviv and Kyiv returned to India over the weekend, all they wanted to do was avoid "closed spaces, loud noises." Each of them is happy that they are safely home, but the future is uncertain and filled with anxiety.

"It feels like a beautiful dream has been snapped... I remember my Ukrainian teachers telling me repeatedly 'Russia won't attack'. Now, with only two years left (for the course to end), we had to leave," says Aakash Kumar from Bihar, a fourth-year student of medicine at Kharkiv medical university.

Kumar says he misses Ukraine and the "no nonsense" attitude of its people. But he fears the Russian attack could change the country forever. "I will never forget the night I reached Kyiv airport and was told it was closed due to the shelling. The airport had become the gateway to my independence over the last four years...," he says.

Medical students from Ukraine have three main worries - refund of fee, re-admission in another country and, most important, the possibility that they may not obtain a medical degree certified by a European university - amid a system heavily dominated by "agents".

Because of their dependence on agents and universities alternating between "online and offline" classes, many spent at least ₹2 lakh on travel alone in the last two years. Contractors or "student agents" used to tie up with universities to arrange chartered planes for students and often asked them to purchase tickets to return for offline classes, only to send them back as classes went online, they say.

Even on February 22, another student says, when they were scrambling to buy flight tickets, agents were offering them the use of chartered planes - which cost around ₹66,000 per ticket one way - on the condition that they pay the entire course fee, including the mess fee, for the coming year. "Agents can influence our ACY (academic records) and have a lot of hold even on universities, making it difficult for us to question them," the student says.

Even during evacuation, while the Indian embassy said buses had been arranged free of cost, the students had to pay at least ₹15,000 for a ride to the border, the student says. Advisories by the Indian embassy in Ukraine never reflected the urgency of the situation, the students say.

In January, the embassy asked them fill out forms detailing their whereabouts. Three weeks later, on February 15, it asked those whose stay was non-essential to leave.

"Our stay here was absolutely essential. We had no idea the situation would get this bad. It would have been so much better if the embassy had kept in touch with us regularly, instead of talking to us through agents who are often looking for their own benefits," another student says.

Ukrainian universities insist on attendance, and there is a heavy penalty for missing even a single class. "...which is why many of us took the chartered plane ride offered by agents during Covid-19, only to go back," the student says.

Back in India now, these students are exploring ways to reach out to bodies such as Indian Medical Association and others to seek transfer of their credits to other countries. They argue that affordability is a key challenge in pursuing medical education in neighbouring European countries.

The experience of Indian students who had to return from China due to Covid-19 isn't particularly encouraging for students from Ukraine, as the National Medical Commission has not only said it does not recognise online classes but has also not responded to requests to be absorbed by medical colleges in India.

Medical graduates trained in any other country must clear the Foreign Medical Graduates Exam (FMGE) to get a licence to practice medicine in India. Between 2015 and 2020, only about 15% of students with medical degrees from Ukraine who took the FMGE have been able to clear it. Students say some universities such as Kharkiv Medical University, among the oldest in the country, have a much better track record than others.

"We have been granted leave from February 26 for two weeks. We will gauge the situation during that period and decide on the future course of action...Hungary has offered continuation of studies, and our credits from first year (or previous years) will be transferred to those universities," Mohammed Moazzam Artaza, a second-year student from the medical university in Lviv and a Bihar resident told ET. "We are waiting for opportunities from other neighbouring countries of Ukraine..."