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Photo Cem Tekkesinoglu / via Getty Images
When the train from Kiev pulls into Przemysl, just across the border into Poland, around 10 p.m., a messy line of Ukrainians forms outside the station. They are not standing here in the drizzle to receive family members who have fled, but to return with the same train to their country at war. Older couples, mothers with young children and many women alone. Some with only a backpack, others packed and packed with more stuff than they left home and hearth with in recent weeks. All without any assurance that it is really safe to turn around.
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Jana (31) can’t wait to be back in Kiev, her beloved city that she reluctantly left at the end of February, she says once on the train. “I miss Kiev every moment. My friends. The neighborhoods. And above all, life that goes on 24/7. Europe, or at least Poland, is so different,” she says. “Besides, I’m not afraid anymore.”
Nearly 5 million of the 40 million Ukrainians have fled their country since February 24, according to the United Nations. But since the Russian military withdrew around Kiev and say they are targeting the east of the country, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are also returning to central and western Ukraine. Last Friday, according to the Polish border police, more people (25,100) crossed the border from Poland to Ukraine than the other way around (24,400). The sleeper train between Warsaw and Kiev will be sold out for the next ten nights, with only a few seats left for the 12-hour ride from Przemysl.
During the first days of the Russian invasion, Jana was afraid, when she kept hearing missile strikes in Kiev, but could not see where they ended up. “My parents, who both live abroad, begged me to leave.” As a compromise, she moved to her sister, who lives a few hundred kilometers southwest of the capital. He also insisted on leaving the country. Via Moldova, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia they ended up in the Polish city of Krakow.
Jana is doing quite well there. Her work as a data analyst for an international company continues remotely. She, her sister and her niece do not sleep in a reception center or in someone’s attic, but rent an apartment themselves in the most beautiful city in Poland. But after weeks of hesitation, Jana has decided to go back. “I want to experience what Kiev is like now and then make a better decision. Every Ukrainian has a life before and a life after this invasion. Only when I’m back home can I determine whether my next life is also in Kiev, or if I have to start all over again somewhere else.”
Every Ukrainian has a life before and a life after this invasion. Only when I’m back home can I determine if my next life is also in Kiev
Jana (31) returns from Poland
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Photo Sergei Grits / AP
Starting afresh elsewhere is not easy for many refugees, says Alexandra Makarenko (38). She is Ukrainian and had to escape hurriedly from the eastern city of Kharkov at the end of February during a family visit, but has been living in Torun, Poland for some time. She helps refugee families as a volunteer – also during their return. Women with children have a hard time in Poland, she notes, especially if they don’t speak a language other than Ukrainian. “It is difficult to get a job and a house. The children miss their friends and their familiar environment. And certainly families separated from their husbands and fathers want to get home as soon as possible.” Adult men under the age of sixty are not allowed to leave Ukraine in case they are needed in combat.
“We Ukrainians are a typical people,” says migrant worker Makarenko from experience. “When we are at home, we say all the time that we would rather live in another country. But once we actually do that, we just get homesick.”
‘Overjoyed’ to be home
Yet the Polish statistics of hundreds of thousands of returnees are biased. Not everyone on this train plans to stay in Ukraine. Some go back a few days to see their loved one. Others want to pick up more stuff than they could take on their flight. Some are going to cancel their rent and close the door behind them.
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Yuri Favorsky (61) is on his way to Kiev to collect some medical documents and then takes the next train back to Germany, where he and his wife are staying with his brother-in-law. He hopes to see his grown sons, who have stayed behind to fight. But he takes into account that this will be his last visit to his own country for the time being. “I did all the paperwork in Germany to stay there for the time being. I have started the integration course,” he says. He considers himself fortunate that, at 61, he has just reached the refugee age for Ukrainian men. Although it also makes it difficult to find a job as an engineer. But rather unemployed in Germany than anxious in Kiev. “I can’t live peacefully in this country with bombs going off here and there,” he says. “The Russians can say that they now only focus on the east of the country, but Putin is crazy and unreliable.”
After a period of calm, air strikes have again taken place around Kiev in recent days. The suburbs on the northern edge are completely in ruins after Russian soldiers wreaked havoc there. Mayor Vitali Klychko advises his fellow townspeople not to return.
That doesn’t bother Jana. Kiev is “surprisingly quiet”, but she is “over the moon” to be back home, she texts the day after her trip. Although she also remains uncertain about what is to come, she said in the train. She is half Russian herself and knows better than anyone how Putin’s propaganda works out.
The reason Jana doesn’t want to use her last name in the newspaper is that she shares it with her Russian father. She speaks to him every day, but is unable to convince him that what he is presented with on television is a lie. “I can’t talk to him about the war anymore. He truly believes that I am being oppressed by Nazis and that it is up to Russia to save me.”