After years of war, 6.8 million Ukrainian refugees’ lives are still mired in uncertainty

By Lauren Kent and Maria Kostenko, CNN

London and Kyiv, Ukraine (CNN) — She arrived in London with just one suitcase, full of mostly children’s clothes, and her young daughter in tow. Her home engulfed by war, Ukrainian mother Yana Felos found herself in the United Kingdom in April 2022 with no friends, no family and no community.

“I just started a new life from scratch,” recalled Felos, 34, who fled Russia’s full-scale invasion to come live with a host family – strangers at the time – who offered to take in Ukrainian refugees.

After close to three years of war, the situation has flipped. Felos says she has nothing to return to in Ukraine.

Originally from a Russian-speaking area of eastern Ukraine, the war broke up what little community she had left. Her grandmother had temporarily moved to Belarus before the war, then stayed when the invasion happened. Her parents passed away years ago. And some friends from home have gone down a concerning pro-Russian political path, she told CNN in an interview in London.

Felos’ last connection to Ukraine was her husband – but he could not leave and after she was abroad for so long, they recently finalized their divorce.

“He kept saying that the war would be over… wait a little, wait a little. The war will be over soon, and we will be together,” Felos said. But she gave up hope a long time ago that Ukraine would ever be safe enough to raise a family there.

Felos and her daughter are among the 6.8 million Ukrainian refugees who remain abroad, mostly in Europe, their lives mired in uncertainty.

Every day, she thinks about what will happen if the British government doesn’t extend her refugee visa in 2025. “There is no such thing as a backup plan,” she said.

Meanwhile, she has been building a life in London – securing her own apartment and a job teaching English at a lifelong learning center. Post-divorce, she has no intention of returning to Ukraine and wants to focus instead on opportunities to give her 6-year-old daughter Alisa a brighter future.

As communities become more fragmented, and the economy struggles, the Ukrainian government wants to encourage those who fled as refugees, most of them women and children, to return. It’s setting up a Ministry of National Unity tasked with creating programs and incentives to encourage people overseas to come home.

“We can’t pressure, push people to come back. I can give very loud message to Ukrainians who are abroad to come and help, to work in defense industry, to help our soldiers, to pay taxes, to support Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an October press conference.

It comes as Ukraine grapples with boosting national morale, among both civilians and troops on the frontlines, many who have been unable to rotate out to have time off.

Last month, Zelensky spoke about the need to end the conflict in 2025, saying, “from our side, we must do everything so that this war ends next year, ends through diplomatic means.” Incoming Trump administration officials in the United States have also been weighing proposals to stop the war.

As it drags on, though, Ukraine appears increasingly concerned about the economic consequences of a hollowed-out population, and the future ramifications of a brain-drain.

“Every month of the ‘hot’ phase of the war leads to more people adapting abroad and more destruction here, so fewer people will return,” said Ella Libanova, an economics professor and director of the Ptoukha Institute for Demography and Social Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

And in the nearer term, it’s possible that more Ukrainians could leave.

“If things get really bad, we may see another wave of migration after martial law is lifted – men will go to their wives and children,” Libanova told CNN. Under martial law, most men aged 18 to 60 are barred from leaving Ukraine. Military mobilization was expanded this year.

The overall security situation remains difficult, with Ukraine hit by a recent surge in Russian ballistic missile strikes, and drone attacks increasing each month. Russia launched 2,434 drones in November alone.

On one of her return visits to see her former husband in Ukraine, Felos recalls telling her daughter that the sounds of nearby explosions were fireworks.

Russia also continues to bombard Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as winter arrives and residential areas are regularly hit. The Kyiv School of Economics estimates that as of January 2024, almost 250,000 buildings had been damaged and destroyed, including 222,600 private houses and 27,000 apartment buildings. In a significant number of cities, more than half the housing stock has been damaged.

Even so, many Ukrainians are aching to go back.

For some, the life they once built in Ukraine feels too substantial to simply abandon. People saved their whole lives to buy homes, build businesses and get professional qualifications there.

Maryana Voronovych, a volunteer helping Ukrainians resettle in Austria, told CNN that among the new arrivals, “80% of Ukrainian refugees have higher education, university degrees.”

“It’s been called the most professional refugee wave in recent (history),” Voronovych said, adding that most are now underemployed, working “low-paid jobs” that don’t match their capabilities.

For some Ukrainians, the decision to return has less to do with economics or government incentives, and everything to do with the practicalities of everyday life – mothers are waiting for schools to reopen, or for schools operating underground to protect students from Russian attacks to return to normal.

Victoria Rybka, 40, from the city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, spent the first few weeks of the war sheltering in a basement with her two young children, before fleeing with them to Europe. But in Germany, one of her daughters struggled to communicate in school, and her other daughter developed a skin condition, believed to be stress-related.

Just two months later, Rybka decided to return, feeling a pull to return to her job in the police force and to her family.

“I can’t leave my husband. We’ve been through a lot together,” Rybka said.

Kharkiv was eerily empty at the time, with mostly men and elderly people who stayed behind, she said. Only one other mother in their block of flats came back in the early days of war, but more have since trickled home as schools reopened underground.

“Everyone makes their own choice,” she acknowledged. “I made my choice – this is my home.”

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CNN’s Lauren Kent reported from London and Maria Kostenko from Kyiv.