Ukraine seeks return of up to 10 million refugees and migrants fleeing Russia’s war

The start of the Russian invasion in February 2022 pushed millions of Ukrainian citizens to flee the country. Between six and 10 million are still living abroad and the government wants them back. They are needed: the country had a deep demographic hole that the war has only made worse. With an eye on reconstruction, a new department, dubbed the Ministry of National Unity, is facing the difficult task of bringing its citizens home.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has made the ministry’s tasks of working with the large Ukrainian community abroad one of the priorities of the resilience plan he presented to parliament on November 19. The new portfolio, a reshuffle of the Ministry for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories, was officially created on December 3.

Olga Pyschulina, a sociologist at the Razumkov think tank, sums up what has emerged about the government’s plans: “There are many people living abroad and the new ministry will try to encourage them to return. How? Nobody knows; there are no mechanisms for such returns yet,” she says in a café near her office. The Ukrainian press has posed the same question to various government departments and the head of state, without success.

For starters, it is not clear exactly how many people the new department will target. Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov spoke in parliament in early December of “eight, nine, 10 million people.” As a rough estimate, of those who fled in the first months of the war, almost 6.7 million Ukrainians are still living abroad, according to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. Volodymyr Landa, an economist at the Center for Economic Strategy, an analysis institute that has been involved in drawing up a strategy for demographic development with the Ministry of Social Policy, puts the figure at five million. The government also says there are between three and four million economic migrants who were already living abroad before the conflict.

Whether people return will depend on certain conditions being met, Pyschulina says. Some of them are impossible to achieve while bombs continue to fall daily across the country. The first is obvious: security. But a stable situation with economic and social opportunities is also needed. Those living abroad also expect a quality education system and health care. Olena Babakova, a Ukrainian journalist and researcher specializing in migration at Vistula University in Warsaw, cites high rental costs, couples breaking up after being separated, and feeling like an outsider compared to those who stayed behind and experienced the war as impediments to returning.

Kyiv is considering all sorts of solutions. It is in favor of EU member states cutting aid to refugees as a means of exerting pressure, and of men of military age not having access to consular services. At the same time, it is seeking to maintain ties with those who left by means of legislative reforms. Last week, parliament approved in its first reading the recognition of dual citizenship (Ukrainian and another country), which until now was prohibited.

Oleksandra Balyasna, 39, fled with her daughter to the Netherlands, where her sister had been living for 20 years. She does not feel “assimilated” into Dutch culture, but she has no intention of returning, at least for now. She continues to run, from a distance, a Ukrainian NGO that provides care programs for premature babies and on weekends she works with a foundation to meet the needs of Ukrainian refugees in her host country: “Of the people I know, no one wants to go back now.” There are no figures either, but Balyasna’s situation, working remotely from abroad, is not an isolated case.

Balyasna demands three requirements that Ukraine does not meet. Security, which is not just the end of the war, but guarantees that it will not be repeated. Access to educational opportunities for her 12-year-old daughter, and a health system that guarantees her the medication she needs. It is hard for her to be so far away, to feel that those who have stayed in the country may look at her with suspicion for having left, as Babakova pointed out. “Sometimes I feel that I am not where I would like to be, but we have electricity, we can sleep every night,” she says by phone from The Hague. A friend of hers with three children returned to Kyiv to join her husband. She deeply regrets it and tells her not to return.

Will to return

Many return for a short period of time, such as the Christmas holidays. On Monday, 150,000 people crossed the country’s borders, but they did so in both directions, according to the Border Guard. Around 1.2 million refugees have returned to their country of origin for at least a three-month period, according to UNHCR. A study by the same organization published in November indicated that 61% of refugees still hope to return when the situation improves.

Warsaw-based specialist Babakova notes differences in the intention to return between those who fled the war and those who left earlier for economic reasons. According to Poland’s central bank, 39% of refugees in the country want to stay longer or permanently, while in the latter group the percentage rises to 61%. The reasons for returning include the inability to find a job suitable to their abilities where they are residing, a lack of a sense of belonging, and having elderly parents or other relatives in Ukraine.

In an email exchange, Babakova suggests that the government could look at some measures used in other countries to encourage returns, such as exemption from income tax for the first three years, mortgage aid, educational grants, etc. “However, these measures will have a minimal effect. In fact, it is more productive to focus on immigration policy, on how to attract economic migrants from third countries.”

Ukraine needs 3.1-4.5 million workers by 2032 if it is to achieve an annual economic growth rate of 7%, according to data from the Ministry of Economy collected in a study by Razumkov. The post-war recovery will require $411 billion, 2.5 times more than the country’s GDP before the Russian invasion. The departure of millions of Ukrainians in different waves of migration is compounded by the country’s demographic deficit.

“The problem is really huge. Ukraine is the world leader in population decline,” Pyschulina explains. The last census (in 2001) recorded 49 million inhabitants, which in 2021 was reduced to 41 million, according to government estimates. Now, the population has fallen to 31 million, excluding migrants, refugees, and the five million people living in areas occupied by Russia. Added to this is the negative population balance, with more deaths than births. For example, this year, in the first 10 months, 250,970 people died for 87,500 births, a ratio of three to one.

Ukraine is in a hurry to get its citizens back. Time is running out, complicating returns. In the demographic strategy approved in September, the government admits that between 1.3 and 3.3 million people may not return. “The longer the armed aggression continues, the smaller the proportion of those forced to leave Ukraine who are likely to return,” the document admits. Balyasna confirms this from the Netherlands: “Every year we live abroad, fewer of us will return.”

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