Ukrainian woman who fled to India from Kyiv to marry her Indian lover amid war
It has been 48 days since Russia attacked Ukraine. However, Ukraine has been fighting hard to protect its country from incessant attacks. Several gut-wrenching stories from Ukraine have surfaced on the Internet.
However, one story has gone viral on social media wherein a Ukrainian woman has fled to India for her love.
A 30-year-old woman named Anna Horodetska, who worked in an IT company, arrived at the Delhi airport on March 17 amid Russia and Ukraine conflict.
She fled to India along with a couple of T-shirts and a coffee machine- a wedding present from her grandmother.
Anna was welcomed by her love Anubhav Bhasin (33), a lawyer, whom she had been dating for just over a year.
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When Anna arrived at the airport, Anubhav welcomed her on the drummer's beat and he went down on his knee to propose to her.
When she said yes, Anubhav placed a ring on her finger.
The duo has tied the knot on Sunday in an intimate ceremony in the Indian capital. They will soon register their wedding in court to make it legally valid.
Anubhav is Hindu and Anna is Christian, so their wedding would have to be registered in a court under a special law. The formalities could take more than a month, says Anubhav.
Love conquers War:
Anna and Anubhav's love story begin at the end of 2019. They met in August 2019 by chance in a bar when Anna was on her solo trip to India.
They exchanged their numbers and started following each other on Instagram.
"By the end of 2019, we were talking a lot," says Anubhav.
In March 2020, Anna visited India along with a girlfriend and Anubhav took them on a road trip to Agra- to see the Taj Mahal and the desert of Rajasthan.
Due to the sudden lockdown in India, Anubhav invited Anna to stay at his family home in Delhi.
"It was during that time that we grew very close, we realized we liked each other. We now knew this was more than a fling. After she returned to Kyiv, we kept in touch through daily video calls," he says.
In February 2021, they met in Dubai and it was the time when they decided to give a new name to their friendship.
Things moved fast after that - in August he visited her in Kyiv and in December she came back to India, a bbc.com report said.
"On the last day of my visit, Anubhav's mother suggested we get married in March. We were discussing marriage at some point but it was surprising that it had come so soon. But I thought why not just go for it," Anna told.
The war between Russia and Ukraine had failed their wedding plans. However, they were believing that the attacks would be concentrated on the border and that Kyiv would remain safe.
But on February 24, Anna’s hometown was under attack. Due to this, many people started packing their belongings and her friends also advised her to do the same.
She then moved to a bunker with her mother and her dog.
"It was filled with people. There was a curfew and we weren't allowed to leave the bunker but I had to go out to breathe and walk the dog. The city was filled with the smell of smoke and the sky was so red," Anna said.
"There was frequent shelling and the train station was far away and there were no taxis to take them. I was scared that she would be out on the street and there was a lot that could go wrong. So I told her it would be safer to stay in the bunker."
Somehow, Anna found a taxi in the morning and she managed to reach the station. She sent her mother and her dog to her grandmother’s village and then she boarded a train to Lviv on the western border.
She first reached Slovakia and then Poland, where she waited for two weeks while Anubhav took the help of the Indian embassy to organize her visa and finally to Helsinki, in Finland, for her flight to Delhi.
