Indian doctor stranded in Ukraine with a jaguar and panther: ‘I can’t leave them’

‘The cats are scared. They are eating less. I can’t leave them’

An Indian doctor who has been stranded in Ukraine since the beginning of the Russian invasion has refused to leave until the government also evacuates his “two kids” – a black panther and a jaguar.

Girikumar Patil got a 20-month-old male jaguar and a six-month-old female panther cub from the Kyiv zoo about 20 months ago.

For the past 13 days, since Russian forces launched an offensive against Ukraine, the orthopaedic doctor has been holed up in the basement of his home and only goes out to buy food for his animals when the curfew ends early in the morning.

“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,” Mr Patil told ANI news agency.

The 40-year-old has lived in Severodonetsk, a small town in south-eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, for the past six years, according to BBC News. The doctor is from the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. He went to Ukraine in 2007 to study medicine and now works at a government hospital in Severodonetsk.

“My big cats have been spending nights in the basement with me,” he told BBC. “There has been a lot of bombing happening around us. The cats are scared. They are eating less. I can’t leave them.”

Mr Patil said this is the second war he is living through. “But this is scarier.”

Before moving to Severodonetsk, he used to live in Luhansk, where pro-Russian rebels have been fighting Ukrainian forces since 2014. It was one of the two regions recognised as “independent” by Russian president Vladimir Putin on February 21.

He left the region after his home and an Indian restaurant he had opened were destroyed.

“Now I am stuck in a war zone. This time I am really worried. My parents have been calling me and asking me to come home, but I can’t leave the animals,” Mr Patil said.

He spent £26,460 to buy the panther and jaguar from the Kyiv zoo. It sold the animals on the condition that he would provide enough private space to house them.

Mr Patil lives in a six-room, two-storey house that has a small enclosure for the cats. Most of his earnings are spent on his pets, including three other dogs, he said.

Since the war broke out, Mr Patil has spent four times more to buy 23kg sheep, turkey and chicken meat for his pets from neighbouring villages.

Besides working in a hospital, which has been shut since the war broke out, and his private practice, Mr Patil also raises funds through his YouTube channels, where he shares videos of his pets. His has more than 87,000 followers.

“I have been fascinated with big cats since watching my favourite southern Indian film star, Chiranjeevi, in a film with leopards,” he said.

The orthopaedic, who has played small parts in Telugu language soaps and acted in half-a-dozen local films and series in Ukraine, has refused to return to India without his pets.

Mr Patil has said he will “hold out” despite being the only Indian and one of the few residents in the town. He said he has been facing intermittent power cuts and internet breakdowns as his house if just 80km from border.

“I am the only Indian out here, and at night I am alone in the neighbourhood. Most of my neighbours have moved to nearby villages. I am going to hold out,” he said.

India has launched a rescue operation called Ganga – named after an Indian river – to evacuate its students from Ukraine.

The operation is in the last leg after the evacuation of over 15,920 students via 76 flights, according to federal aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia.

Last week, an Indian student Rishabh Kaushik grabbed headlines after he returned with his rescued dog Maliboo through the government’s evacuation programme.

Ukraine remains in a quagmire of war, with attacks being launched from air and on ground by Russian troops, aided by ally Belarus in some pockets as Vladimir Putin tries to thwart the existing Ukrainian administration and include a collapsed country into the Russian fold.

Continuous bombing, shelling and missile strikes have forced 1.5 million people to flee Ukraine since the invasion – the biggest conflict Europe has seen since the Second World War – began. More than 350 people have died and 759 have been wounded, according to the United Nations.

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