not experience any discrimination at the border. “The guards are just trying to control the crowd, but it’s not racism. I haven’t experienced any racism. Not at all,” he said. While most refugees of colour Al Jazeera interviewed did not report any racist episodes, others present a completely different side of the story. […] Rubi, a 35-year-old international student from India, returned for offline classes to Kyiv only last month. She left all her belongings in her new apartment and escaped the city with 25 Indian and Bangladeshi friends. According to her, they have not received any help. “Everything is free for Ukrainians only. But we are also part of Ukraine,” she said. “One person at the border told us that we cannot cross. Imagine, we walked 30km (18 miles) and the man is saying something like this. We could not get any transportation, we don’t have any accommodation, no one is there to help us.” Anna Alboth from Minority Rights Group confirmed that racial discrimination, while not systemic, is a fact. […] “Discrimination mostly takes place on the Ukrainian side of the border. But there are people in Poland offering free transportation who refuse it once approached by a non-Ukrainian refugee. We receive messages from Nigerian and Indian students who could not handle the fact that they are treated differently and returned to Lviv,” she said.” Al Jazeera, People of colour struggle to escape Russian invasion of Ukraine, 2 March 2022 “Záhony, Ukraine-Hungary border – After six years in Ukraine, Ayoub, a 25-year-old Moroccan pharmacy student, had built a life he was proud of in Kharkiv, a city in the country’s northeast. He learned the Russian language, which is widely spoken in the city of 1.4 million, studied Ukrainian culture, and made friends from around the world. He was due to graduate in three months, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced him to flee the country, and exposed him to a level of racism he had not previously experienced. Initially, he had planned to wait out the invasion in Kharkiv, hoping the Russian assault would stop. But when that possibility appeared increasingly unlikely, he joined classmates to make a long trek across the country to the Polish border. […] In Lviv, a city 80 kilometres (50 miles) from the Polish frontier, it became clear to Ayoub that he, along with other non-white international students, would be stopped by Ukrainian guards from leaving the country. “They wanted Ukrainians to go first, so it was white people who got priority. Taxi drivers were also charging us crazy money, but I thought there will always be opportunists, even in war. It wasn’t until I reached one of the ‘checkpoints’ on the approach to the Polish border that I was actually pushed back and told to wait,” he told Al Jazeera. Instead of waiting, he decided to try crossing into Hungary, where he arrived on Wednesday. “When I spoke to the guards in Russian, they told me I should be speaking Ukrainian and questioned whose side I was on. That was really upsetting because I had worked so hard to learn Russian, not just speak it, but read and write it as well.” […] Universities across Ukraine have attracted international students due to the high-quality education on offer for relatively low fees, ranging between $4,000 and $5,000 a year. Students from countries such as India, Nigeria, and Morocco have helped to make Kharkiv a vibrant university city and their fees have contributed to the local economy. Many have stayed in Ukraine after graduating and taken jobs in the country’s hospitals and businesses. But some international students said their schools did not offer them assistance to leave the country as Russian forces launched the invasion. In an email seen by Al Jazeera, dated February 24, the day of the invasion, students at one university received an email notifying them that classes would move online. Two days later, students at the same institution received an email announcing a “vacation” from February 28 to March 12. “No one helped us to leave or coordinated anything, we were just left on our own,” said Deborah, a 19-year-old student from northern Nigeria. She asked Al Jazeera not to use her real name. […] “My friends went to the Polish border and were treated awfully by the Ukrainian guards. It wasn’t just Black people like me; it was anyone who wasn’t white,” she 81