Photo Credit: Times of India, Economic Times
A 21-year-old Tamil Nadu student, Sainikhesh Ravichandran, in Ukraine has joined an international volunteer military force dedicated to fighting off the Russian invasion.
His decision to join the Georgian National Legion paramilitary unit comes despite a 2015 Delhi court ruling which maintained that it was an offence for citizens to participate in fighting in a foreign country. The court ruling came after a Shia group attempted to send registered volunteers to protect shrines in Iraq from ISIS, the Union home ministry said that Indian citizens cannot be allowed to travel to a foreign country with the “declared objective of taking part in any conflict”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for foreign volunteers to join the International Legion, three days into the Russian invasion on the 27 February. Ukraine’s Defence Ministry has since claimed that it has received “several thousand” applications from foreign nationals.
Ravichandran was enrolled in aerospace engineering at Kharkiv Aviation Institute, a leading aerospace university located in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, which has been subject to intense Russian shelling in recent days.
Speaking to his family, who hail from Thudaliyur in Coimbatore, Indian intelligence officers were able to uncover that Ravichandran harboured a deep passion to join the armed forces but was rejected by the Indian army twice as well as the US on account of his height. His room was reportedly adorned with photos of soldiers.
“It’s been excruciating. I’m just waiting for my son to return home,” his mother told officials.
His enlistment in the Ukrainian military comes as India’s Ministry of External Affairs is attempting to withdraw the estimated 13,300 Indian students studying in Ukraine. The evacuation of North Indian students has reportedly been prioritised over their Tamil Nadu and Kerala counterparts, in a move Tamil students have decried as “discriminatory”.
Read more here: North Indians prioritised over Tamils amidst Ukraine evacuation
Ravichandran has reportedly gone incommunicado since the outbreak of the war.
Read more here.