Back home to the warzone. Emotions of displacement among returning Ukrainian migrants

Photo by: Olena Yermakova

Three women agreed to share their stories with me: Nataliya – a young mother from Lutsk in the west of Ukraine; Oksana – a mother of adult children from Sumy, an eastern region that was under occupation; and Sofiya – a young single professional from Kyiv (all the names were changed to help protect their identity). I asked them why they returned? The three women had very different circumstances and journeys, but they did have one thing in common – no fear and no regrets. 

Journey home

It is 9:00am on a rainy November day in Warsaw. The bus station is empty, except for two old-fashioned looking Ukraine-bound buses. Two kids drag small suitcases through the puddles behind their mum who is hurrying to one of the buses with papers in hand. From another side, a young woman rushes to the bus with two buns and a bottle of water in her hands. The snacks are for her grandma; who is about to make the journey home – but she is refusing to take them. I board the bus too and find it nearly empty – a relief with 11 hours of travel ahead, albeit a distance of a mere 400 kilometres. There is no faster way. The only planes flying in Ukrainian skies since February are fighter jets.  

As the bus makes stops in smaller towns on the road eastwards, it fills up quickly and eventually gets so full that a few people are standing. It turned out that the grandma from the platform in Warsaw was heading to Kovel, in north-western Ukraine.

“Why did you leave? There is no war in Kovel,” another passenger asks the elderly lady.

“What are you saying – it’s scary just to hear!” the grandma laments.

“I shall see,” I think to myself. I am heading to my hometown which is in the same region. It is the first time I am returning home after fleeing at the end of February. I feel scared as the bus rolls closer towards the Ukrainian border. I do not fear so much for my safety, rather to see my country at war. And because I have spent most of this time abroad, I am afraid that I will not know how to act if something happens.

The bus has a hard time getting through to the border checkpoint. It barely manages to manoeuvre past a dozen kilometres of trucks parked on both sides of the road. This is what happens when the ports are blocked. Eventually, the bus rolls onto Ukrainian soil. The very first sight is a barricade. I break into tears. This is it, welcome home, I think to myself. I am not sure if these are tears of joy from being home at last or tears of pain from seeing what it has become.  

For those who stayed these sights became white noise. We who left, we imagine our hometowns the way they were in peace time, ruthlessly pushing out the images of how we saw them last – in the chaos and terror of the first days of the invasion. I realise now this is what actually scared me about returning – to feel those emotions again. The last time I stood by our house was when I said goodbye forever to my parents and drove away past a tractor digging trenches where flowerbeds used to be at a checkpoint today, waving goodbye to male friends on duty. It is scary to voluntarily repeat the worst day of your life.

After we cross the border it seems that there is nothing but total darkness, at only 5:00pm. Once we reach the first town I am relieved to see a few Christmas lights – there is light and life after all! As the bus turns the corner, a billboard appears with a portrait of a young man next to a 1991 map of Ukraine and a slogan: “The heroes fallen for Ukraine – forever in our memory”. The soldier looks younger than me. The next day, it was announced that Christmas lights are forbidden in the Kyiv region this year.

First impressions

Driving down a heavily fortified road, I finally arrive at my destination. I absorb everything I can make sense of in the darkness, investigating the changes. I am relieved to find things looking much less scary than the last time. After spending some time with my family I begin my interviews.

“I must cook while I am speaking to you, otherwise, I will either be hungry or we won’t manage to have an interview,” Oksana from Sumy says after we connect on video. Electricity is rare these days; one must use the window of opportunity efficiently. She is active in the kitchen but somehow manages to focus on answering my questions with very well-structured thoughts.

She shares her impressions upon coming back home “compared to Europe, lit up and beautiful”. “I noticed that the small refurbishing, like a fresh coat of paint on a staircase, was not done this summer and the city has decayed a little. You notice that now people are busy with other things.”

“The city was very unlike the place I had left: few people on the streets, one would hear a lot of English because of foreign journalists and many if not most establishments were closed. Plus, there are air-raid sirens. So on the first day, my impression was – it is too early, I will not be able to make it here. I live alone and I did not understand how I could feel safe,” Sofiya from Kyiv says. It is early May, and she just returned from Berlin.

I go to see my third respondent, Nataliya, in person. As I am waiting for a taxi, the application sends a notification – keep your documents ready in case the car is stopped at a checkpoint. I am reminded how this seemingly normalised life is full of the signs of war. “Only hits, only victory”, the slogan on the radio strengthens the feeling, but together with a song by Skryabin it cheers me up and reminds me that I cannot afford to be down about it right now.

When asked what triggered their decision to return, none of the women mentioned any objective material factors. Each of them expressed gratitude to their host countries and families. “As long as I live I will not forget it,” Nataliya tells me, her eyebrows raised in awe when describing how an entire Polish village, halfway between Lublin and Warsaw, was offering help and even buying toys for her five-year-old son when she could not afford much.

Nonetheless, for each of my interlocutors, the decision to return was well-reasoned, unswerving and final. The arguments they gave were entirely emotional rather than practical. “There is no strong logic here really,” Sofiya says with a laugh. “You just have this emotional longing, a feeling inside that you want to be here.”

Bread-and-butter issues do matter. Undeniably, it is hard to live in a foreign community without a job or sufficient health insurance. But after all, what is the rationality of returning to the grounds of the biggest war in Europe in decades, where civilians are terrorised routinely? All rational arguments, all survival and self-preservation instincts, point clearly against it. Perhaps in times of war, when nothing is more fragile than material things, which can be destroyed in seconds and lives lost without warning, it is the immaterial that comes to the foreground? Three emotional themes prevailed across the women’s responses: purpose, loneliness and a desire to regain control.   

The search for purpose

The first thing that each woman occupied herself with after reaching safety was volunteering. “We can’t just be sitting around,” Nataliya told her sister after settling temporarily with her son in a gym/office room of a big house that became an impromptu shelter for fleeing mothers. There, they help their host family pack and send humanitarian aid for territorial defence. Others demonstrated and assisted refugees. Perhaps this is the result of survivor’s guilt – a mental condition that many Ukrainians are now intimately familiar with. However, the volunteering could not change this feeling. 

Oksana is a child psychologist who fled Sumy first to Kraków and then to Canada, where her children live. Even after the liberation of the region, kindergartens remained working online – the danger persisted since the city is a mere 40 kilometres from the Russian border. “When the children went back in person, I needed to return, or otherwise quit my job. I realised that since my English is not great, I could work physically. But I studied a lot, and I have experience, I can be more useful if I work in my profession,” Oksana explains. She adds that she could not do her job in a different language and cultural context. Working with Ukrainian refugees was not an option either. “I believe that in Ukraine help is needed more than for those in Canada. Yes, they also need psychologists to help the children adapt to new surroundings. But I myself have not adapted. I would need time before I could help others.” She describes how she was taking calls at 2:00am because of the nine-hour time difference. “Once children went back to kindergarten, I was receiving calls from the mums of kids who stutter, with whom I had been working before the war. They kept asking, when will I be back. I realised that I was needed there.” So in mid-October Oksana returned home.            

Sofiya only intended to pay Kyiv a short visit – to help a documentary maker and pack her things. But within several days, she came to a realisation. “Yes, there is danger, there are these unpleasant aspects of war,” she jokes, “and city life is affected. At the same time, there is something I lacked in Germany – an understanding of how I can help the situation, what I can contribute for Ukraine to win.”

Sofiya explains somewhat apologetically that she tried in Berlin. She met with local activists hoping to find an initiative to join. “When you are on the ground, it is easier,” she admits. She knew she had to find reasons to justify the great risk of returning: “So I rationalised my decision, I told myself I will gain valuable experience working with a journalist in de-occupied areas – I saw a lot of mission in this job.” But she admits that this reasoning was secondary to her longing to just come home. “This is psychological. After returning, for the first time in months, I felt ‘I am enough’. In Kyiv, I would simply eat in a café, but it made me feel almost like a hero, because I was spending money in a country that needs it, where it is essential to pay taxes, to keep the economy going, so that people can keep their jobs … It made me part of something bigger.” Indeed, on the ground, serving the cause is not an errand to run in a designated place and on a schedule. Your very presence is an act of resistance.

Regaining control

Being a refugee is a story of total loss. Leaving home means you are losing your future in the form you planned and dreamed. Not being able to come back home means you lost your past. As such, the world as you knew it has collapsed in a heartbeat. You have collapsed too. You were an adult, capable, respected, confident, with property and a social network to fall back on. You did everything right and reached a certain social standing. You controlled your life. Now you are completely dependent on the goodwill of other people.

“This is not how you ever imagined travel. I went abroad to study, to do internships, and probably to prove to myself and others that Ukrainians are capable, that we can communicate as equals. And when you are fleeing and you are a refugee…” Sofiya pauses for a second, “actually this word, ‘refugee’, just like the word ‘war’, it was so difficult to get used to them. In the beginning, it was difficult to even pronounce. I remember speaking to other Ukrainians in Berlin, who were saying no, we’re not refugees, we’re more like forced migrants.” Sofiya laughs and adds, “the denial was so blatant it was almost funny but sad. So even though as refugees we were treated very well and I have nothing concretely to complain about, you still feel inferior, weaker, smaller, a victim. This reinforces the feeling of powerlessness, which consumes you anyway when there’s war and you cannot control anything. The label of a refugee and the experience of being one, even if it’s as smooth as it could be, which it was, it’s still not a role you feel good and comfortable in.” Indeed, many describe feeling like a child again who has not learnt to properly speak the language of adults, a foreign language, thus being helpless and reliant on others for basic things. 

The key thing about fleeing is that it is a journey people did not prepare for. The shock of the full-scale invasion cannot be overstated. Major life decisions – should I stay or should I go start a life in a different country – were made within hours, sometimes minutes and were often left to chance and contingency.

“We got across the border, called a former classmate asking if we can go to hers at least to rest, at least something after 12 hours at the border, which was simply horrible. She agreed without question. More people came there too. We were all just sitting in shock, thinking what are we doing here, why do we even have to flee our homes?” Nataliya tells me. She did not want to leave, just like each of my interviewees, but her mother insisted. On the evening of February 24th, her father drove Nataliya with her son and younger sister to the border. But they could not reach it, a traffic jam spanned 12 kilometres.

“In two hours we moved maybe 500 metres, maybe not even that, I don’t remember precisely because we were all so shocked,” Nataliya adds. “Mum, who decided to accompany us to the border, said, “let’s walk”. I thought, how good that I took the kid’s scooter. This was past midnight. We wrapped ourselves in blankets, and started walking. We did not have much to carry, only backpacks because we did not know where we would end up, we didn’t know anything at all.”

The knowledge, the realisation of what just happened and what that choice entailed, comes only later, after you reach safety and the adrenaline subsides. The scale of change and loss is so all-embracing that from the outside it is difficult to imagine, and from the inside, it is difficult to process. At first, you have to recover from the traumatic experience of fleeing itself, which, as Sofiya tells me, “wasn’t really your choice”. And after that, you start wanting to take back control of your life.

“Everything is amazing there, but mentally I was not prepared for Canada,” Oksana recalls. “At 5:00am on the third day of the so-called green corridor my younger daughter calls me and says ‘Mum, my classmate is going by car right now. Quick, get up and leave!’ So I grabbed a backpack and left.” Oksana did not manage to flee earlier – on the first day women with small children and the disabled had priority to evacuate, on the second day the road was jammed and it was too far to walk on the icy road – no public transport operated. It took them three days to reach the west of Ukraine, from where Oksana made it to Kraków by train. Like Nataliya and Sofiya, she ended up by accident where she never expected to be. “The plan was to get to Poland, and for my kids to come see me there.” But as she was making her way, Canada simplified the visa procedures for Ukrainians and the plan changed – Oksana’s daughters insisted that she came to Canada. “I just wanted to calm them down and see them, so I ended up in Edmonton.” Disoriented, each of them wanted their lives back. “I needed to go back to make sure Kyiv is still standing, that it is not over for me there,” Sofiya says.

The paradox is that at home, despite being unsafe physically, many find psychological safety which seems unattainable in a new environment. This security comes from familiarity, and it gives people the feeling of control which enables them to navigate life at war, whereas in exile they feel like handicapped observers of the tragedy unfolding.

“One way or another, you are living through a war in the background. Abroad, you read the news and worry. I was much more anxious in Berlin … On the spot, you mentally prepare an action plan on what to do and where to hide. You follow instructions, taking steps to overcome danger, and it reassures you that there’s always something you can do. It is an illusion of control that works.” Sofiya adds a disclaimer. “But many cannot afford it. For instance, those with little children, health conditions, or low tolerance to air raids.”

Oksana describes how after arriving in Edmonton she was walking a street in bloom. “I saw a dandelion’s shadow on the pavement and could relate. I felt just as transparent, fragile, undefined and detached from everything. This is a tough mental state to be in.” In contrast, she says she is at ease now. “I did not need to adapt when I returned, I am in my comfort zone.”

Loneliness and collectiveness

“In the end, we’re strangers in a strange land,” Nataliya explains her thinking when in Poland. “Home pulled me back. I know that here I have my mum, I have my husband. Who needs me over there?” Family reunification is rightfully cited as the major reason for returns. However, the loneliness that migrants experience is not only about missing your loved ones, it is also about missing your people as such – a wider community to belong to and to define yourself within. To ground yourself amidst rapid changes, it helps to be surrounded by people who share your sense of reality, which creates mental security too.

“Here I do not feel lonely, even though most of my friends have left the city. I am surrounded by people who are going through the same experience. You’re here out of choice and feel a sense of belonging, which is crucial,” Sofiya shares.

“In Vilnius or Warsaw, it seems that every second café displays Ukrainian symbols and collects tips to support Ukraine. In Berlin, this was not the case. This lack of visual solidarity created a feeling of loneliness, which I think is extremely dangerous when you’re experiencing such a big trauma,” she adds. “I remember being really hurt by the fact that Russian rallies were allowed, with symbols of the so-called people’s republics … shortly after one of them, I was heading to a demonstration, wrapped in a Ukrainian flag and I felt really scared. Scared of being attacked and unsure if the police would protect me. This is not okay…” Suddenly, Sofiya stops and sheds a tear. I feel at a loss as to how to comfort her but she quickly continues. She mentions trying to explain being bothered by the rallies to a German friend who did not see a problem and explained that he considered it part of the democratic process to allow all sides to protest. “It’s like talking to a wall, which also responds with all these beautiful words, twisting the values, which we are defending at the moment. And you feel this loneliness, because”, her voice trembles, “you are not understood, and your pain is not fully shared. They say they do, they are ready to support you in many ways, like with shelter and welfare. But on the strategic level, they are not ready. When there are no real timely actions to treat the root causes rather than the symptoms, there is no certainty that this country, this society, understands your and your people’s struggle, and is ready to change the situation… I guess I just expected more from Germany.”

Many refugees I spoke with over the past months describe a feeling of living in parallel realities compared to their surroundings. Neighbours wish you a good morning with a smile, while you are fighting off tears because the morning was anything but good – missiles hit your hometown, you cannot reach loved ones. While you are mourning, the people around you are throwing parties and shooting off fireworks, which trigger your PTSD. They ask you less about how you are coping, and offer less help. You do not blame them. Their lives go on, and you know it is normal. But yours does not, and that hurts.       

In contrast, Sofiya describes the ease of volunteering in Kyiv: “You do it together with ardent people, who are all in the same boat. You see the goal ahead – victory – and understand how to move towards it. Plus you feel that you’re not rowing the boat on your own, and that’s very important. I think that was the main factor why I decided to stay.”      

No fear and relentless hope

I conducted my interviews in November 2022, after Russia started terrorising civilians with mass missile strikes on critical infrastructure, leaving them without electricity, heating and water. I asked if they regret their return now. Each answered without hesitating – “definitely not”.

“I realise that anything can happen, but in this complete instability all around, now I have at least certainty in knowing where I live and what I do,” Sofiya says. Partly, they are reassured because they know they have the right to leave again. Ukrainian refugees benefit from unprecedented opportunities for mobility which made a huge difference in this crisis. Oksana now has a three-year visa to Canada, so she has found comfort in the thought that she can see her daughters again.

“Our host family told us that if anything happens we are always welcome,” Nataliya tells me, and adds with a laugh, “we responded that we’ll be waiting for them to come visit us when the war is over.” Oksana summarises: “I am Ukrainian, so I am better here. With my mentality, my principles, I fit in here and here I feel more useful. And when a person feels useful, she is happier.”

I ask them if they are afraid of a nuclear disaster, another invasion or just of the freezing winter – all possible scenarios. “What scares me much more is news about possible mass evacuations of three million Kyivans – it terrifies me that I may be left without a choice,” Sofiya responds. As for the rest, her answer is “I stopped being afraid”. “Not that I believe there’s no threat. I think I just ran out of fear. Although after the attacks of October 10th (missile strikes on the centre of Kyiv– editor’s note) I often feel anxious. When it comes to blackouts, I try to accept that the winter will be extremely severe, which was to be expected when dealing with a terrorist state.” She, like others, has stockpiled candles, torches, warm clothing and food. “Still, there are places with generators, you can find power. Yes, it’s difficult, time and energy consuming. But you can join efforts with others going through the same thing. It’s an open question whether I can endure it all, but I will try.”

Oksana shares the attitude. “I’m not worried for the things I can control – neither the cold, nor the hunger. Even during a nuclear strike one can survive if one knows how to behave. I even bought a protective suit in Canada, I thought about it. But the things I cannot control scare me. Like the fact that orcs (a pejorative term to refer to Russian soldiers – editor’s note) are standing at the border and if they come again, our boys will fight till death. This I fear…” The electricity goes out just as she is finishing her sentence. But Oksana assures me she is fine, she has been through the blackouts in the 1990s too. “I was a pioneer, I was a member of the Komsomol, and then I was told I might as well eat my Komsomol card because the USSR fell apart. So you know, such is our generation that it’s difficult to scare us, we’ve seen it all.”

“The only fear is an attack from Belarus, we’re a border region,” Nataliya tells me. “But we know that if that happens – they will fail. We know what our girls and boys are like!” I ask Nataliya, “Like what?” She responds warmly: “Strong, independent, unbreakable. This I know for sure.” I clarify by asking, “so you’re not afraid because you believe in the Armed Forces of Ukraine?”

“Yes!” she says and laughs briefly. But then she makes a serious face, “But this is really so. I am only afraid that it will drag on, because our boys are dying there.”

I ask if there was anything that would make them leave again. Each of them does not exclude this possibility completely, but keeps it as a last resort. “I am not ready to start my life anew elsewhere, to part ways with my previous life because my previous life has changed enough as it is. I long for stability and normality. Besides, I see a purpose in what I am doing here now,” Sofiya says. She now helps fundraise for humanitarian and military aid. “And to be honest”, she adds, “this does not happen to me often. Earlier I struggled to find meaning. Now that I found it I don’t want to lose it.”

“Returning to work, or even when neighbours met me, it felt as if I was a ray of sunshine,” Oksana shares. “For those who stayed all along, when I came back, especially from distant Canada, they thought, ‘well if even she returned then definitely all will return to normal’. Near-strangers were hugging me. People were really glad to see me, and it’s not about me, it’s because my return gave them hope.” We finish the interview since the internet may soon be disconnected. I only ask if she wants to add anything. The voice from the dark screen adds, “I only wish you to hold on too, everything will be great!” I am amazed by her truly unbreakable spirit.   

 An open ending

“Everyone wants to come back home!” my parents respond emotionally when I ask why their acquaintances returned. “They left out of fear and to save their children, not because they wanted to.” I realise how key the word “forced” is in the phrase “forced displacement”, and that the right to return is as important as the right to leave.  

As I am writing this text in early December, the blackouts significantly worsened, and the mayor of Kyiv confirmed preparations for possible, albeit unlikely, evacuations. I read about such events with worry for the brave people I interviewed. I hope they do not have to go through it all again.  

Unlike them, I leave once more. “When do we meet again?” mum asks me. Christmas? I am unsure. Planning is one of those subtle things that disappeared from our lives after February 24th. As I wait for my delayed bus in a mall, a siren goes off, and within a blink of an eye, this visual normality of a crowded mall shatters. Stores close within seconds, crowds run down the immobile escalators.

On the bus again, watching videos of the liberation of Kherson, I do not even notice that we have made it to the border. Glancing down I see a Ukrainian border guard in uniform holding a weapon. Suddenly and counterintuitively, I feel a little scared to cross to the other side, because he will no longer be there to protect me. Here, although there is no such thing as safety, you feel protected by everyone, by everything. As we pass the barricade, tears well up again. I am not sure if they are tears of relief that my trip was safe, tears of joy for Kherson, or tears of sadness that I will no longer be here to share in the experience with my people, to feel alive in this togetherness which amid all the death and depression is lifesaving. We cross, and the bus rolls into fields of emptiness.

Research produced during a visiting fellowship, sponsored by the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna

Olena Yermakova is a junior visiting fellow at IWM Vienna and a PhD candidate at Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

refugees, returning home, Ukraine, Ukrainians, War