Ukraine: A Nation Divided. Uncertain future of Ukrainian refugees

Brian Bonner: Anyone who’s lived in Ukraine during the war knows that this is a completely different country since the full-scale invasion more than two years ago. A lot of good things have happened in terms of how Ukraine has become stronger and more self-reliant, but war mostly brings bad things.

If you walk around the streets of Kyiv, the capital where we’re broadcasting from, it’s a bit lonelier. We have the soldiers at the front fighting for our survival and fighting for the nation’s survival. And then we have a whole category, millions of them, who are just simply not here. People who left because of the war or economic reasons or a combination of both.

How many Ukrainian refugees are out there?

Brian Bonner: Fortunately, we have Hlib Vyshlinsky in the studio. He’s the executive director of the Centre for Economic Strategy, an economist, veteran social researcher, and policy analyst who’s been studying the refugee situation very closely. Welcome, Hlib.

Before we run through the summary, how did you decide that this is an issue we need to follow?

Hlib Vyshlinsky: When the full-scale invasion started and we saw this wave of refugees coming from Ukraine and then the situation stabilized somehow, in the summer of 2022, we understood that millions of people are out of Ukraine. Nobody knows the exact figure.

The United Nations organizations in charge of putting together these figures were not good enough. The figures were very different, from four million to eight million. Also, there were no representative surveys of refugees, like some countries organized in Poland and Germany. Some agencies surveyed refugees at border crossings.

However, there was no representative survey. The problem with having no representative survey was that you could not really understand intentions. Why have we decided to work on it? We are an economic policy think tank, and certainly, we needed to understand what the potential impact on the economy of refugees returning or not returning could be.

In 2022, we designed this study, got financial support from the International Renaissance Foundation for the first wave, and conducted our first big survey in November-December 2022. Listening to me, many people asked how we managed to build a representative sample.

We came up with an idea together with our polling partner InfoSapiens company. Sometimes it looks like a fantasy world, when you have such a war in 2022, 23, 24, with new technologies and still trenches, et cetera. But what was good about it was that, especially with the high penetration of internet banking and mobile banking in Ukraine, most of the refugees retained their Ukrainian mobile numbers.

That means that together with the Ukrainian mobile operators, Kyivstar and Vodafone, we just sent random invitations to subscribers of these mobile networks whose phones were registered abroad. We put quotas by country, by the number of SIM cards that each country shows.

And then you understand how it works. It comes as SMS, but on a modern smartphone, it is very easy: just click on the link and then go to the online survey. So we did this for all three waves, and the latest wave was conducted in December 2023 and January 2024. So two months ago, it was finished, and then we came with our third report with conclusions: what are the current intentions, and what could impact the economy?

Brian Bonner: So this is very fresh, and you’re telling me you’re very confident in your numbers and your methodology.

Hlib Vyshlinsky: There is a term called a panel study, when you have the same respondents in all waves of the survey. We do not have such a panel. So each time we survey randomly selected Ukrainian refugees abroad, there are different respondents. This means that, for example, when we come up with our main figures, like the share of those who are absolutely sure that they will return to Ukraine, there are different respondents. 

It means that, for example, if we see that in December 2023, there are fewer people who are sure they will return to Ukraine compared to December 2022, it doesn’t mean that those people who were there in 2022, all decided to stay in their new countries. It also means that some of those who were willing to return have already returned, and they are not in the universe or in the sample anymore.

Brian Bonner: It’s very interesting. You know, I’ve read it a few times. It’s an excellent report, and I highly recommend it to people. It’s in both English and Ukrainian. Can you walk us through the highlights? And I particularly like that you have optimistic and pessimistic scenarios. So whatever mood you’re in, this report is for you. But take it away.

Hlib Vyshlinsky: Firstly, we decided again to cross-check numbers from the United Nations. For a long time, we trusted this data and we generally stick to the figure of over 6 million Ukrainian refugees. However, as we cross-checked it with data from border services, from both Ukraine and all neighboring countries, democratic neighboring countries, we came to understand that, in fact, this 6 million everybody is talking about is an overestimate.

Our estimate is that we have 4.9 million Ukrainians who came from Ukraine to other countries because of the war. And from this 4.9, 3.6 are in democratic countries, 1.3, we stick here to the United Nations estimate, are in Russia and Belarus.

Why do we have this difference? Because a listener could say this is strange data, I saw data from Eurostat that there are over 4 million refugees only in the European Union. The problem is that, in fact, Ukrainians were moving a lot between European countries, mostly from Poland to Germany, but also to some extent from Italy, for example. They were moving to smaller countries. Some people moved, for example, to the United Kingdom, to Scandinavian countries, also to Canada, and to the United States. And they are still counted in the first country in many cases.

For example, Italy is not crossing out people who do not show any sign of existence in the country. With Poland, for example, if somebody left for Ukraine, they have some calculations, but certainly not for Germany. There is no exchange of data. So it’s good news that we have just 4.9.

Also, it is important to understand that before the full-scale invasion, Ukrainians were very active labor migrants. I believe we did our own estimate in 2018. Our estimate was that on any given day, approximately 2.5 million Ukrainians were working abroad.

Brian Bonner: Before the full-scale war?

Hlib Vyshlinsky: Yeah, before full-scale war. As a change, we currently see much fewer children. For example, in the first wave, over 50% of refugees were children. When it comes to our survey, we survey only adults, but adults are asked about their family, including all children. For each child we have, we ask his or her age, whether he or she is studying, etc.

So, the decrease in the share of children to 38% is a rather strong signal that people, who moved in the first months of the invasion, and generally March 2022, which was the peak month of people going out of the country, people who wanted to return to Ukraine, who had stronger ties to Ukraine, and moved mainly because of security reasons, and they were with children, some of them are back in Ukraine. However, it means that in their place came people who came mostly as, as we call them, quasi-labor migrants. Those with experience working abroad also use the free movement of people within the European Union to get opportunities abroad, be it for a job or education, etc. Plus, we saw an increase in the number of adult military-age men in our survey.

Brian Bonner: But still not the majority?

Hlib Vyshlinsky: No, not the majority. Among adults, 72% are women. Among all, including children, 65% are women. Still, the biggest single group is women aged 35 to 44, 13%, clearly mothers who came with their children.

Brian Bonner: Okay. So, the biggest segment is women aged 35 to 44.

Hlib Vyshlinsky: Yeah. But it is becoming much less a single portrait. It was never a single portrait. Not, a striking conclusion, you know, from your newspaper experience, as a headline, like, one strong figure, et cetera. Conclusions, which is very important for policy making and for trying to understand who the refugees are so that we never had one single portrait of a woman with a child or children with one or two bags moving with these bags via the railway station in Przemysl and trying to find the way.

From the very beginning, we had a very significant segment, and it’s still in place in the last wave. People who came from really dangerous areas, be it settlements that were occupied by Russians or settlements where there were active hostilities. Just today I had a request from the deputy minister in one of the ministries to calculate the share of those people who came from oblasts where we had active hostilities or occupation and who said as a question, whether they had this as experience in their settlements. So, in fact, it is active hostilities or occupation. And we came up with a figure of 30%. So, there are 30% of refugees who came from really dangerous areas or from occupation.

Brian Bonner: Maybe lost their house even.

Hlib Vyshlinsky: Yeah. And in this case, you could come to the conclusion that it will be very complicated to get these people back except for the very rapid occupation of areas, etc. On the other hand, among those people, we have a higher share of those who never wanted to go abroad and who are staying abroad, especially we speak about older people, not just very old people, but generally, like, people over 50. Who had their property, who had their job, who had their history, and generally, with the right support of international partners and the right government policies, they could go back to Ukraine.

Do Ukrainian refugees want to return to their homeland?

Christina Antuzinska: I’m a lawyer, and I was working as a lawyer before Ukraine and Kyiv. But then, when the full-scale war had started, I just remembered how I was awakened by the rockets and military planes. The Russian tanks came through Victory Avenue to Kyiv near my metro station. Nobody offered us real help in the first months—no weapons, no money, nor any kind of support.

I was left totally alone, only with my parents and all my colleagues. At that point, I was working in an IT company as an international contract lawyer. When I heard that even my colleagues were already not in Ukraine, I realized that I needed to be responsible for myself and for my mother. And if it’s already coming to Kyiv, I want to defend myself and my mother. So we decided to go on an evacuation train.

Daria Gerasimenko: I have left two months in advance. War was the reason for the war in 2014. Because I’m originally from Donbas, I decided in 2015 that I would like to leave the country. Because I saw it as an opportunity for the future, that it will be worse and worse. And I didn’t make a mistake. In the year 2016, I became a mother. I had a little child so I couldn’t leave. So I decided to wait till my daughter is a little bit bigger, and it will be possible to live with her. But my husband decided to leave for a job. And he just chose the Czech Republic. And he was offered a good job in České Budějovice.

Brian Bonner: The top three countries are Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. There is no surprise there. Outside of Europe, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada are also no surprise in terms of the largest share. All Ukrainian refugees in Europe have legally protected status for three years, until March 2025. You have found in your study that they are gradually reducing their benefits. 

I know we both read the same Economist story about Ukrainians. They appreciate that European countries welcome Ukrainian refugees, but they would like them to come home too and help the country. What do you sense about trends in European policy towards letting people stay? 

As you know, I mean, apparently, there are studies that show people from poorer countries like Ukraine moving to richer countries like Germany with 10 times more average income. It’s very, very difficult to get those back. Where do you see European policy going on? Oh, it’s very different in different countries.

Hlib Vyshlinsky: It’s different in different countries. Even if you look at the two largest countries, Germany and Poland, they are absolutely different. For example, Germany invests a lot in language training and in the sort of adaptation skills, knowledge and professions that a person had before becoming a refugee, into the labor market in Germany. That’s why Germany is paying rather significant social payments to those who are still on this adaptation course, including at least half a year of language training. For example, if you were a teacher in Ukraine, they would do everything possible so that you would first become an assistant teacher and then a teacher in a German school because they have a shortage of teachers. But certainly as in any country, among Ukrainians as well, there could be people who are not so active in looking for jobs and will stay on welfare for longer. And certainly, Germany will use the tools it has for Germans if they stay unemployed for too long to push them into the job market.

Christina Antuzinska: I miss Ukraine very much. I understand that Germany has lots of its own problems, especially in Berlin, and people here are very, very different. They cannot see at all the perspective Ukrainians have on why this war is happening. They do not understand, and there are a lot of Germans who are either ignorant, support Russia, or just don’t care about it.

The most comfortable country for Ukrainians is Ukraine, where you think of yourself in a comfort zone in the sense of mind. We understand our values, what we are fighting for, our aims, and why we help each other. We understand that we want to share and take the path of the European Union, not to pass to Russia and post-Soviet countries who do not share European values, and so on.

Hlib Vyshlinsky: Poland is sort of fully libertarian in this sense, they did not have any policy towards refugees because they did not have Syrian refugees earlier. And they just took Ukrainians, gave them legal protection, gave them access to schooling and healthcare, gave the standards similar to Polish citizens, assistance, monetary assistance for children, and that’s all. For example, in Germany, if you have a child, this child must go to school in Germany. In Poland, nobody cares. For example, there could be a family that uses the safe skies of Poland and likes being in safety there but virtually is fully in Ukraine. For example, a mother working remotely for a Ukrainian company, and a child studying remotely in a Ukrainian school, and they just use roads, like the healthcare system, police, et cetera, and no other services.

Brian Bonner: Well, we have deep roots. I mean, Ukrainians do because even before the war, Poland was a popular country for migrants. Do you agree generally that the longer they stay, the less likely they are to come back?

Hlib Vyshlinsky: Generally, yes. We have this factor of those who have returned already, they are not in the sample anymore. And that’s why there are fewer people who are willing to return. However, we have another question asking those who were surveyed about how their plans changed. We have multiple alternatives, and they decided to stay in the new country for less time. They decided to stay there for a longer time. They decided not to return to Ukraine while previously they were thinking about returning to Ukraine.

So generally, chances are negative among those who were surveyed. They generally decided to stay there for longer. Plus, you have just very rational things. The children are integrated, they know the language, and they have new friends, mothers, and sometimes fathers. They got jobs, so they were integrated into the labor market. Plus, for example, if we speak about a group of young women, there could be marriages with locals. And it will mean that the chances of them returning to Ukraine become very low.

Brian Bonner: You even put numbers on it. You said that, in the best case, 1.4 million people will remain outside of Ukraine. And that’s the best case or the optimistic scenario. The other scenario is 2.3 million. Both figures could be more encouraging actually. This is a lot of people.

Hlib Vyshlinsky: From those 3.6 that are in democratic countries. Because we did not survey those who are in Russia and Belarus. Certainly, some share of them could return. But we need to find out what this share is. And we could generally expect that the share will be lower. Certainly, some people had to go to Russia. But those who are the most pro-Ukrainian, if they have money, could go to Europe. Some people are pro-Ukrainian, but they do not have the money to use these complicated routes to Europe. Maybe they will return to Ukraine. Going back to people who are in democratic countries, yes, you’re right – from 3.6. In the best scenario, we will get the majority of them like 2.2 back to Ukraine. In the worst scenario, only about 1.3 will return.

Brian Bonner: That’s almost 40%.

Hlib Vyshlinsky: So generally if we look at optimistic and pessimistic scenarios, what changed between our waves? In the first wave, this middle ground was slightly higher than 50%. In this sort of baseline scenario, slightly more than 50% of those who are abroad will return.

Christina Antuzinska: I see my future back in Ukraine because I went through different personal transformations and I need time to figure out how I will develop myself in the future. My parents, sister and grandmother all live in Kyiv all this time. I also have all my friends and my apartment in Kyiv. For me, it’s very important to be with my family. I already got used to insecurity in Ukraine and during the war, I already was in Ukraine two times and I plan my next trip to Ukraine to Kyiv. I also will make an excursion for a few German people who will go with me to Ukraine in August.

I have lots of friends who haven’t even tried to leave Ukraine. When the full-scale war began, they were in the west of Ukraine, or they just moved to the west of Ukraine. They absolutely have no idea what they will do. And they just, I wouldn’t say that they stick to the flow, but they try different things in order to find them. And some people want to stay in Berlin, in Germany. Some people want to stay in other countries. Some people plan to come back in two or three years when the war is over. Some people will come as soon as possible. Some people are already back at home. For example, in Odessa.

Daria Gerasimenko: I was in Ukraine and I had this feeling, I can’t explain it, but I had the feeling that I won’t come back. Don’t tell your children that it’s not our fault, that we will return or do something like this because no one knows what will happen. And the children, they take it differently than we, adults. It’s very hard to say what I’m missing, because for me “missing,” it’s when you think that something will come back. But nothing will come back. Because I don’t know Ukraine now. I remember Ukraine before the war. I have never been to Ukraine since the war started.

What are the economic consequences of refugees leaving Ukraine?

Brian Bonner: Socially, this is not good for Ukraine, the more people who don’t return. I mean, I know you point out the plus side, that de facto Ukraine becomes more integrated into the European Union. And so, the plus side could be that it might speed up the day when Ukraine is a full member of the European Union, and then you can live anywhere in Europe you want. But you’re an economist. What are the economic consequences of not having these 4.9 million people?

Hlib Vyshlinsky: We had this estimate and it’s rather significant. Generally, in different scenarios we will lose from four to six percent of GDP each year. If we speak about the attrition war, then if we don’t have this production and consumption, the production is linked to consumption. If there is no demand, in many cases there is no supply, then we have less taxes and then we will have less capacity to withstand Russian aggression.

Brian Bonner: Even there you had, I think, optimistic and pessimistic (scenarios – ed.). Optimistic is 3.6 percent of GDP and pessimistic is over 6.3 percent. What is the figure? I can’t remember, off the top of my head. You said there was a decline in the percentage of people who said they would come back or are likely to come back.

Hlib Vyshlinsky: We had this one question besides a lot of complicated analysis. That is the clearest and direct question that could be used for this analysis. In the first wave, 50 percent were absolutely sure they would return. Now it’s just 26.

Brian Bonner: It dropped from 50 to 26?

Hlib Vyshlinsky: Yes.

Brian Bonner: This is not good. I believe part of the survey was that of those who said they wanted to come back, more than half said they would not do it until the war was over. Is that right?

Hlib Vyshlinsky: Yeah. And I hear this pessimism in your voice, but really you also need to come back to this sampling thing that shows that some people who left in the early months of aggression are already back in Ukraine. Some who left because of, for example, job opportunities abroad, they could have left even if it was not for the war starting on the 24th of February 2022 and the introduction of free movement of labor within the European Union, just because they wanted to go abroad and have better job opportunities.

Daria Gerasimenko: About the job, my life abroad in Europe is different from the life of other people because I do the same job. I was a hairdresser in Kyiv. I worked for myself. I’m a hairdresser in the Czech Republic, I work for myself. Financially, my last two years in Kyiv were good because I had a good job, I worked in a good salon, and I had my clients. But in the Czech Republic, it’s easier to earn money. You can do the same, but it’s easier for you to earn money.

How to bring people back to Ukraine?

Brian Bonner: What can we do about it? If anything?

Hlib Vyshlinsky: Here we came from the experience of the new member states of the European Union. Because in fact, (the reasons – ed.) which were used by those people who have other reasons than just security, are very close to reasons of labor migrants from Estonia or Lithuania or from Poland who went abroad 20 years ago, when these countries joined European Union to work in the United Kingdom, for example, in Ireland, et cetera. I even spoke to some former politicians from these countries. The general idea was that Ukraine has to do everything possible to have this free movement of people that we currently de facto have with this temporary protection as a preemptive freedom even before Ukraine joins the European Union. Because still, as you rightly said, this temporary protection will end in March 2025.

Brian Bonner: But they could extend it.

Hlib Vyshlinsky: They could extend it, but not as easily as they extended it by one year. Because this regime was generally first used for Ukraine, it was designed only for three years. Nobody designed it for a longer war.

Brian Bonner: So you mean freedom of movement: if they return, they can leave again?

Hlib Vyshlinsky: Yeah. In fact, it’s very important to those who are stuck in a job. They’re hugely overqualified for the countries they are residing in now, like Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, etc. For example, if we had a better job opportunity in Ukraine, they would feel safe coming back to take this job opportunity. But if something is not right, or for example, security risks increase, they could go back to a safer country or to a country where they could get a better offer.

That’s like destroying this barrier for people to go back to Ukraine. Another thing that requires no political decision but some real investment on the ground is doing everything possible to make border crossing easier. Because sometimes it’s also a barrier. For example, if the person wants to go to have an interview in Ukraine, and there are all these trains, buses, etc., Starting from these discussions that are currently in place, about reopening some of the airports, bigger things to smaller things, but also costly and those that need support from our partners in Poland, for example, to make the movement of people as hassle-free as possible.

Brian Bonner: Integration, reintegration back into the schools, help to rebuild if they lost their houses, so forth, all these are good. But would you still say that the biggest thing that would bring people back to their homes, to the country that they love, and the country where they are very much needed now is just the end of the war?

Hlib Vyshlinsky: Yeah. You have a group whose biggest reason is security, mostly for their children. Still, even within this group, and we also see it from our segmentation, some people are integrating faster, and there are people who want to integrate less. Like those who have financial support from Ukraine, who have remote jobs in Ukraine, and who are patriotic, because this is also a very important variable in this calculation. There are some people, and we should acknowledge it, who have been dreaming about leaving Ukraine for a long time, who had their dreams about a nice life in some developed Europe, and did not like Ukraine at all and never trusted in the future of the country. There are some people.

But there are also people who are homesick. But also there is certainly a field in between, when, for example, people are generally patriotic, they generally came because of security reasons, but then: oh, maybe the school in this country is better than the school in Ukraine. Okay, older children are going to universities and university is better than university in Ukraine. Diplomas from German universities or UK universities will be valued higher than diplomas from the universities in Ukraine. So you have a range of different reasons for this.

Brian Bonner: We have complex factors, external, the war, internal, and family dynamics.

Hlib Vyshlinsky: It is individual for each family. And yes, as you mentioned, family things, even relations. And what we see, in the first wave, we were not very good at asking, like what is the share of those refugees who have their fathers in the family here in Ukraine. And now, in the last wave, we did it better, and still, we see that there is a minority.

You could imagine the sort of popular perception that you have this wife and children and bags, suitcases, and a father waiting for them in Ukraine. Still, generally, those with fathers waiting for them in Ukraine and husbands are the minority. So in some cases, they manage to go as a family. In some cases, fathers found their way into other countries. And in some cases, there were no husbands at all, there were single women and single mothers who left in the first place.