Alone and unwanted: Millions of displaced Ukrainians hope to go home as the war rages

KYIV — Yana Kraschuk has fled twice from Russian invaders with her young son but she still refuses to move far from the frontlines — fearing the cost and isolation that comes from seeking a home in a new and safer city.

She’s not alone.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused the biggest forced movement of people in Europe since World War II — 9 million fled abroad or to safer places inside the country — creating growing social, economic and political problems.

“Until the end of the full-scale war, the de-occupation of territories, the coming of peace, the restoration of their homes, and the de-mining of territories, there is no reason to expect that they will be able to return home,” Minister of Social Policy Oksana Zholnovych told POLITICO.

With the Russian military making incremental frontline gains, thousands more people fleeing their advance, and Russian missiles regularly bringing death and destruction to Ukraine’s cities, that day is a very distant one.

That’s putting the Kyiv government in a bind when it comes to the 3.7 million internally displaced people (IDPs). The government’s State Policy Strategy on Internal Displacement Until 2025 says integrating those people in their new communities away from the war zone is a strategic goal, but it also calls for supporting “persons who intend to return to their former place of residence.”

The needs are huge. The cash-strapped country is allocating just over half of its budget for defense, and international aid funding needed for social spending is falling short.

The impact of mass forced displacement is testing the country’s social fabric too.

“The very fact of internal displacement already creates a very powerful factor of increasing social tension,” said Zholnovych.

Like Kraschuk, many IDPs are reluctant to put down roots in new places because they believe their displacement is temporary. Without economic and social integration, social discord is likely to grow and more displaced Ukrainians may be forced to return to frontline or even occupied areas, or to emigrate — deepening the country’s demographic crisis.

Optimism about going home is high but fading. A February U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) report shows 72 percent of Ukrainian IDPs plan or hope to return home, down from 84 percent the previous year (there is a similar fall to 65 percent from 77 percent among the nearly 6.5 million refugees outside the country).

“Our task is to ensure that all these people can fully and quickly integrate,” Zholnovych said in a written response to POLITICO.

“Home is home”

The dream of returning is still a potent one. Many more recently displaced people seek shelter close to their home regions, according to Right to Protection (R2P), a Ukrainian NGO supporting displaced people. Familiarity and lower costs are factors, but so is the hope that they will soon go home.

“We have nearly three years of full-scale war, but people still don’t believe that they can’t go home,” said Yaroslava Shvetsova, R2P’s head of communications. “This is why integration is such a complicated question.” 

Hospital workers are grieving in front of an improvised memorial with portraits of the victims displayed on the ruins of one of the medical buildings of the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital destroyed by a rocket explosion, in Kyiv, on July 12, 2024. | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images

Government policy to support integration in new, safer places is hampered by the country-wide reach of Russian attacks, including on energy infrastructure. Many Ukrainians also have strong local ties which, along with the lack of economic opportunities elsewhere, can dissuade them from putting down new roots and even drive them to return to areas the state deems uninhabitable.

Kraschuk is a railway worker from Kupiansk, a city in the northeastern Kharkiv region which was seized by Russia in the first days of the invasion. When Ukrainian troops liberated the city seven months later and it came under Russian shelling, she fled with her 4-year-old son for the Czech Republic. Although she was provided free accommodation there, she did not feel welcome, and returned to Kupiansk.

“In spite of everything, home is home,” she said.

But in August 2023, her apartment block was shelled, and she was evacuated to Kharkiv. She and her son now live in a student hostel-turned-collective center for IDPs, where the government has said she can stay for free until the end of the war.

Kraschuk’s reasoning is pragmatic as well as emotional. From Kharkiv she can check on property she owns in Kupiansk. She rejected an offer to move to Poltava, further from the front line, as rent-free housing was guaranteed only for six months. 

“Then afterward you’re on your own,” she said. “Before, I was confident. I had my own flat, my child went to kindergarten, I had a job, I knew what would be tomorrow. Now I don’t know. I can’t go to work because I have a small child to look after. And so we live as IDPs.”    

Over 85,000 IDPs like Kraschuk are still living in collective centers initially established as an emergency measure, according to UNHCR. And new waves are coming, as the government calls for mandatory evacuation from frontline areas. 

With time, fewer refugees living in collective centers can move on, said Karolina Lindholm Billing, the UNHCR representative in Ukraine. Most are vulnerable people relying on social assistance — the elderly, people with disabilities, single mothers.

More people, less money

Despite the war dragging on, international humanitarian funding for Ukraine is dwindling. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) launched an appeal for $3.1 billion in January to cover 14.6 million Ukrainians in need. To date the plan has received just over a third of funding. 

“This is very concerning,” said Lindholm Billing. “Needs are growing, not reducing.”

On top of increased fighting and shelling, the impact of Russia’s destruction of energy infrastructure is expected to worsen as winter comes. Aid is needed to prevent another mass forced displacement if people cannot heat their homes, said Lindholm Billing.

International development funds currently cover the state’s obligations for pensions and social assistance. This is driving a strategy to link or shift external humanitarian support to targeted or means-tested state social assistance. IDPs felt the effect in March, when about 70 percent of monthly benefits for all registered displaced people were halted, leaving cash only for the most vulnerable.

Ukrainian servicemen prepare a trench system in the Donetsk region, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. | Roman pilipey/AFP via Getty Images

Alla Zenko, manager of the collective center where Kraschuk lives, thinks this is no bad thing. “They should go and work,” she said.

Training, small business grants, child care support and incentives for businesses to employ IDPs are some state strategies to assist refugees into employment. But without adequate financial support, some are forced to move back to danger zones and onto humanitarian handouts.

“The new policy is aimed at reducing support and stimulating economic independence,” said Anna Radchenkova, R2P’s senior lawyer. “But those without the physical possibility to work will go back home. The problem is that not all have a place to go back to, because it was destroyed, and they will still rely on humanitarian aid.”

While the shock of the 2022 invasion united Ukrainians against a single enemy — Russia —cracks are appearing as the war continues. The millions stranded far from home are facing blowback from their new communities, where many hear (incorrect) accusations that they get benefits without contributing to communities, said R2P.

“Now we realize we have many different problems, and some of these problems are internal,” said Shvetsova. “This conflict became bigger, in terms of the absence of unity.”