How Social Media Helped Indian Students Stranded in Ukraine

A video of scholars stranded within the war-hit Ukrainian metropolis of Sumy holding Indian flags and threatening to take up a journey to the Russian border on foot created an uproar in nationwide and worldwide media, which in flip, prompted the Indian authorities to fast-track their evacuation course of.
Cut to Wednesday, all of the stranded college students have been evacuated from the northeastern Ukrainian metropolis.

The incident supplies an apt instance of how social media helped individuals caught within the ongoing conflict involving Russia and Ukraine.

Ever since a Russian offensive started in Ukraine, social media platforms have been flooded with movies and images by these stranded within the east European nation, troopers and even politicians.

Jisna Jiji (25), a medical pupil who was amongst a bunch of round 700 Indian college students that determined to take up the journey to the border on foot, stated social media performed an necessary function of 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 stated.

A safety particular person stand guards close to Indian and overseas nationals, evacuated from Ukraine
Photo Credit: PTI

Mobile telephones in hand, troopers and civilians are documenting the conflict because it unfolds.

Medical pupil Aousaf Hussain (25), a local of Kerala, was caught in a metro bunker along with his mates. Their sources had been depleting quick and there was no signal of assist coming.

So he determined to make use of his Instagram web page, which is adopted by just a few thousand individuals, to doc the day-to-day struggles within the bunker. He posted a number of movies, narrating sordid tales and displaying buildings broken on account of steady shelling and bombings.

In a number of of the movies, he detailed their life within the bunkers, describing what sort of issues they had been going through and the way they had been arranging ingesting water and meals for survival.

Talking to PTI, Hussain stated he began documenting his life within the bunker so that individuals might see the movies and are available ahead with assist.

“When the war started, there was no one to help us. So we started to record the videos so that the people who saw those could help us. It was as if we were forgotten. Nobody was asking about us,” he stated.

Hussain stated sharing the movies on social media platforms helped make individuals conscious of the problems they had been going through.

In the age of social media, cellphones permit individuals to witness the horrors of a conflict dwell sitting 1000’s of miles away. It additionally helps the households of these caught within the conflict zone to get updates on the bottom scenario.

“It helped us keep our parents updated as there was a lot of fake news doing the rounds. We presented the truth via social media,” Hussain stated.

Moreover, social media helped individuals coordinate amongst themselves throughout the evacuation.

For Seemesh Sasidharan, a pupil coordinator, it was troublesome to handle a bunch of 800 Indian college students stranded in Kyiv. However, with the assistance of a Telegram group, he was in a position to convey and ahead the required data to the group. It helped him preserve observe of the scholars.

“Bombing was going on everywhere and there were 800 students with me. We divided them in groups of 40-50 with two senior students managing each group. The students were scattered as there were four routes of evacuation.

“The web helped us coordinate among the many college students. We informed them which path to take and the place to not go. We made a Telegram group of the 800 individuals and I saved informing them concerning the practice timings,” Sasidharan stated.

An Indian national with his pet cat evacuated from war-torn Ukraine
Photo Credit: PTI

The social media platforms also helped the students raise their issues with the embassy.

“With the assistance of social media, we raised complaints that the embassy was not energetic and so they grew to become energetic. I used to be in contact with the embassy through social media. Social media helped us to apprise the world of the scenario,” Sasidharan said.

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.

“We used a WhatsApp group to coordinate amongst ourselves. All the information relating to the evacuation and the updates of the Indian embassy had been forwarded to the group. During the evacuation too, we had been requested to achieve the border ourselves, so the scholars who had already escaped helped us by offering the contact particulars of drivers and routes,” he said.

Not only civilians, Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are using social media to dismiss the Russian media’s propaganda. Zelenskyy posted several videos showing him with other government officials and said Ukrainian leaders had not fled Kyiv as Russian forces entered the capital.

Ukrainian officials also wielded social media to launch recruitment drives for foreigners and local hackers to join the war.

However, there were other sides of social media that the students had to face — trolling and fake news.

“We had been trolled badly as individuals sitting 1000’s of miles away had been abusing us for selecting to review overseas,” Hussain said.

In the fast-evolving situation of a war, it is quite difficult to separate fake news from real news.

“There was pretend information everywhere in the web and as we had been already panicking, it added to the anxiousness,” Hussain stated.