Geolocation
Airwars assessment
At least one person was killed by alleged Russian shelling of Otakara Yarosha Lane in Kharkiv on March 1, 2022.
Fakty News reported that a 21 year old Indian student who was standing in line for food was killed by a Russian bombing of the city. New Indian Express added that the student was in his final year of medical school at Kharkiv National Medical University.
RBC reported that the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of India Arindam Bagchi made the announcement about the student being killed. “With deep regret, we confirm that this morning an Indian student was killed during shelling in Kharkov. The Ministry is contacting his family,” he wrote on his Twitter page. According to Tribune India, the student was from the Chalageri in Haveri district of Karnataka state in India.
Elena Shapovalova, director of the State Center for International Education, announced on Facebook that their former student’s relatives decided to donate his body for medical research. Elena posted “Remember our fourth-year medical student from India…who died from the debris of a Russian shell on the morning of March 1, 2022 in Kharkiv, just standing in line at the ATB grocery store.”
The victim’s friend told BBC that “He called me at 8am Ukrainian time and asked me to transfer money to him because he wanted to buy more food for us. I transferred the money. After 5-10 minutes, I tried to contact him and he did not take my call. I tried many times. Later, someone answered but spoke in Ukrainian, which I did not understand.” Someone in the bunker eventually translated and they found out their friend had died. His friend also told The Indian Express “(He) was shot dead around 10.30 am Ukrainian time today. He was standing in queue outside a grocery store when the Russian army fired at people there. He was my hostel mate initially, and later shifted to an apartment outside.”
Multiple sources, including Fatky News and Ukraine Segodnya, attributed the bombing to Russian forces.
Sources sympathetic to Russia commented on the incident, with one tweet from @mediazzzona saying that Putin told the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that Ukrainian was using Indian students as human shields while Ren.tv and Interfax News both quoted Russian officials as saying that Ukraine was not letting Indian students leave the country, specifically to go to Russia.
The incident occured at approximately 10:30 am local time.
Summary
Sources (25) [ collapse]
Media
from sources (1) [ collapse]
Geolocation notes
Reports of the incident mention the ATB grocery store on Otakara Yarosha Lane (переулок Отакара Яроша) in the city of Kharkiv (Харків). The generic coordinates for the store are: 50.024730, 36.218396. Due to limited satellite imagery and information available to Airwars, we were unable to verify the location further.