(UTV | UKRAINE) – As many as 20,000 foreign volunteers have joined the Ukrainian forces to fight Russia since March 6, the Kyiv Independent said on Wednesday.
These “foreign volunteers will be able to obtain Ukrainian citizenship if they want to,” an Ukrainian media quoted Deputy Interior Minister Yevhen Yenin as saying.
On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine. Since then, several Ukrainian MPs, beauty queens, civilians and even foreign volunteers have taken up arms to fight for the country against the full-scale Russian invasion.
Among them is a 21-year-old Indian student ‘Sainikesh Ravichandran’, a student from Coimbatore district in Tamil Nadu, joined the paramilitary forces in Ukraine to fight against Russia.
Officials visited his residence and inquired his parents about it. They discovered that he had applied to join the Indian Army but was rejected.
Meanwhile, over 2 million people have fled Ukraine amid the raging war.
Evacuations of people fleeing embattled Ukrainian cities along safe corridors began on Tuesday, while UN officials said the exodus of refugees from Russia’s invasion reached 2 million.