Maryna Prylutska, 34, says she is grateful for the hospitality she has found in Bonn, Germany, although she misses loved ones back in Ukraine.
Maryna Prylutska
For Maryna Prylutska, Christmas will be a muted affair this year. Like other recent family celebrations, it is celebrated online with most of her family at home in Ukraine.
That is, when power is restored to Prylutska’s hometown after a series of Russian attacks.
It’s been nine months since Prylutska, who now lives in Germany with her two children, last saw her husband and parents. And for Prylutska and the millions of others who fled the Russian invasion this year, the holiday season is proving to be an especially tough one.
“I really want to go home,” she told CNBC via Zoom from her new home in Bonn, Germany. Before the recent attacks, she had planned to return with her children for Christmas.
“It’s great here and I’m very grateful to everyone who has helped us along the way. But no, there’s no place like home,” said the 34-year-old.
Prylutska is what she calls an “accidental fugitive.”
We Ukrainians are ready to do anything to defend our children.
She and her husband had been considering leaving Ukraine since the war began on February 24. However, having no friends abroad to stay with, she was reluctant to move into a home with her 12-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son.
“It was really scary for me. I had to weigh the pros and cons,” said Prylutska, an English teacher who had never traveled abroad before this year.
Then, one day in March, she received a call from her former father-in-law, who had come across a potential host while transporting his own children to Germany. If she wanted, she and her children could share an apartment in Bonn.
Maryna Prylutska’s children, 12 and 4, are adjusting to their new home in Bonn, Germany after leaving their small hometown in central Ukraine.
Maryna Prylutska
By this time, Russian troops were only 80 kilometers (50 miles) from their hometown, a small town of 16,000 people in central Ukraine, and their options were limited.
“I remember going to bed at night thinking about how I would defend my son with my body if a bomb fell,” said Prylutska, who had read a similar story from another Ukrainian mother. “We Ukrainians are ready to do anything to defend our children.”
Within days, she and her children were driven overland to Germany, where they are currently living with four other Ukrainian women and their six children in their contact’s home.
Ukrainian refugees almost 8 million
Prylutska is one of more than 7.8 million Ukrainians – around a fifth of the population – who have fled the country to Europe since the Russian invasion.
Some 2.8 million have entered Russia, including through Moscow’s forced resettlement program, while the vast majority have resettled west, mostly to neighboring Poland, which has taken in 1.5 million refugees.
These include 27-year-old trauma therapist Kateryna Shukh. For the past seven years, since the start of the 2014 Donbass war between Russia and Ukraine, she has been working with women refugees at Bereginya – Mariupol Women’s Association. Now she finds herself among them.
I work with refugees and I continue my work, but I am also a refugee now.
Katerina Schukh
Vice President, Bereginya – Mariupol Women’s Association
“I’m a refugee now too. I work with refugees and continue my work, but I’m also a refugee now,” said Shukh, who left the port city days after the Russian invasion and is now supporting refugees in Warsaw, Poland.
Shukh said it is this work that is helping her “survive this situation”.
Aside from providing psychological support and art therapy for the women and children housed in shelters, part of Shukh’s role is to provide information to help refugees navigate the host countries’ myriad resettlement programs.
Kateryna Shukh, center, says she has found solace in supporting other Ukrainian refugees by hosting art therapy sessions from her new home in Warsaw, Poland.
Katerina Schukh
In Poland, for example, Ukrainian refugees have a right of residence for 18 months with the possibility of applying for a three-year temporary residence permit. Financial grants are available for families and certain vulnerable groups.
Still, the rapid shortage of housing and job opportunities is causing some Ukrainians to consider returning home, Shukh said. She recalled a mother who recently brought her five-year-old daughter back to her windowless home in an occupied part of Ukraine because she couldn’t find a job.
“Maybe 20% have already gone back (to Ukraine),” Shukh said of the refugees she works with. “But most of them have no place to go back to.”
Countries revise their refugee support
Others are still relocating to other places on the continent. But hastily designed resettlement programs are now putting some countries under pressure.
In the UK, for example, weeks after the invasion, the government launched a Homes for Ukraine sponsorship scheme, offering a “thank you” payment of £350 a month to households willing to host one or more refugees for at least six months.
The program has so far accommodated 108,000 people, while a further 42,600 have arrived in the UK to stay with relatives. But 10 months later and with no end to the war in sight, some are wondering how long the arrangement might last.
“Now I don’t make any more plans,” says 32-year-old Yuliia Matalinets, a freight appraiser from Odessa, who has been living with a host couple in Bristol, England, since June. “I understand there’s no point. I don’t know what tomorrow will be, in a week, in a month.”
There is an urgent need to find practical solutions to the problems faced by Ukrainian migrants and host families.
Kate Brown
CEO, reset communities and refugees
The situation is further complicated by the fact that many Ukrainians have settled in relatively affluent, middle-class areas from which it can be difficult to relocate to affordable housing.
Kate Brown, CEO of Reset Communities and Refugees, which helps house refugees in the UK, said the number of Brits offering migrants their homes has fallen over time. As of December 6, the charity had registered 227 potential hosts in its database but 3,948 active Ukrainian cases – who may represent one or more people – looking for a home.
“There is an urgent need to find practical solutions to the problems faced by Ukrainian migrants and host families so that more people feel empowered to host. Where possible, hosting agreements can be expanded, and where this is not possible, Ukrainian migrants are assisted to move into longer-term housing,” Brown said.
Yuliia Matalinets, right, freight surveyor from Odessa, photographed with her host, left, in Bristol, England.
Julia Matalines
The UK government last week revised its scheme and announced an additional £150million in funding for local authorities to help Ukrainian guests move into their own homes. Hosts who extend their support beyond the first year of sponsorship will also receive increased reward payments of £500 as part of the new measures.
It’s welcome news for some hosts, who say tandem crises in the UK have strained their ability to support their guests.
“It’s gotten harder over time, especially with the rising cost of living and energy bills,” said a Nottinghamshire couple who have shared their home with a mother and son for nine months, who asked not to be identified.
For many newcomers like Matalinets – grateful as she is for her hosts, whom she describes as similar to her parents – the sooner she can get home to her boyfriend and family, the better off.
“I hope that the war ends really soon and I have the opportunity to go home,” she said.
Prylutska, who now hopes to return to Ukraine with her children in the spring, agreed: “I want to go back and I really hope that this will all be over soon and our country will be free again.”