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Sri Lankan students leaving violence-hit eastern Ukraine
View(s):With assistance from the embassy in Moscow, Sri Lankan students have begun to leave Lugansk, the violence hit area in eastern Ukraine, officials said yesterday.
Amid growing unrest in the area, at least 24 students who were studying at the Lugansk State Medical University had decided to leave the area and moved to the Ukrainian capital Kiev from where they will head home in the coming week, an External Affairs Ministry official said.
“The embassy had to write to the Rector of the University and request him to release the students’ passports which are kept in his custody. A request was also made to give them academic leave so that they will be able to continue their studies from where they left off once the situation returns to normal,” he said.Some parents of the students too had called the Sri Lankan embassy in Moscow to seek assistance for their children to leave the area. “The situation has deteriorated in the past week and hence many foreign students in the area are keen to leave. The Sri Lankan students who moved to Kiev are now out of the danger zone,” he said.
Udayanga Weeratunga, Sri Lanka’s Ambassador in Russia said last week that there were around 60 Sri Lankan students in the Lugansk and Donetsk areas where heavy fighting was taking place.
He said the embassy was monitoring the situation and would help those who wished to leave the area. Meanwhile, a Sri Lankan mother whom the Sunday Times contacted in Batticaloa said she had been unable to contact her son for a few days. “He has been there for the past five years studying medicine. We are worried about him,” she said.