In yet another instance of an Indian national stranded in Ukraine refusing to be evacuated without their pets, a doctor stuck in the war-hit nation has said he will not come back without his ‘kids.’ The stranded Indian national, Dr Girikumar Patil, has a jaguar and panther as pets.“I called the (Indian) embassy but didn’t get a proper response. My place is surrounded by the Russians but I’m trying my best. I treat them (pets) as my kids,” Dr Patil said, according to news agency ANI.According to a BBC report, Dr Patil hails from Tanuku, in Andhra Pradesh’s West Godavari district and went to the eastern European nation in 2007 to study medicine. The report further said he bought the animals from the Kyiv zoo about 20 months ago, adding that while the jaguar is a 20-months-old male, the panther is a female which is aged six months. According to the report, Dr Patil, who is 40 and has a YouTube channel named ‘Jaguar Kumar Telugu,’ currently lives in the small town of Severodonetsk in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas. Earlier, the Andhra Pradesh native was living in Luhansk, one of the two regions recognised as ‘independent’ by Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 21. Then, on February 24, Putin authorised a ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, which is still going on.India is carrying out Operation Ganga to evacuate its citizens, majority of whom are students, from Ukraine. The mission is being conducted from countries bordering Ukraine which as it has closed its airspace due to the Russian invasion.
