Indian student who refused to leave Ukraine without his pet dog arrives safely after plea

The invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces has made the country a very dangerous place. Different countries started evacuating their citizens from Ukraine. Many people have already fled the country but still, there are people who refused to leave the country without their beloved pet.

One such student is Rishabh Kaushik who is a third-year engineering student at the Kharkiv National University of Radio Electronics in east Ukraine. When Russian troops invaded Ukraine, he tried to flee to India but he was unable to secure passage for his rescued puppy, Malibu.

He said that Indian authorities asked for more and more documents but that was impossible to get. So he was left either to escape the war-torn country on his own or stay behind with his dog and he chose to stay behind with his dog. He decided that if his dog couldn’t leave, he wouldn’t either.

He said that there was a risk of staying there but he could not leave his dog behind. So he was stuck in Ukraine in a bunker in Kyiv. He says that his dog cried a lot, frightened by the bombing going on outside. There was little hope left for him.

But he continued to appeal, pleading with the Indian government to help him and his dog Malibu with permission to fly out of the country. Soon his story reached the animal advocacy group PETA. The group appealed to the Indian government to allow the people to take their pets on flights.

So the Indian Government gave in issuing a “one-time relaxation measure” which allowed Indians fleeing Ukraine to take their pets with them. So at last Rishabh and Malibu were able to leave Ukraine and they were among the 219 Indian nationals who flew from Hungry to Delhi in a special flight to evacuate them from Ukraine. We are happy that at last Rishabh and Malibu were able to land India safely.