SUBSCRIBER+ EXCLUSIVE REPORTING — Ukraine’s fate isn’t only being decided on the battlefield or on Capitol Hill; it also rests in the hands of nearly five million people who have fled the country.
While there are many children and elderly citizens among the 4.9 million Ukrainians who remain abroad, there are also medical, tech and other skilled workers, along with hundreds of thousands of potential soldiers.
As Ukraine takes the necessary but politically sensitive step of lowering the draft age from 27 to 25 to recruit more citizens to the fight, a new survey by the Center for Economic Strategy, a Ukrainian non-governmental research organization, estimates that 1.8 million of the refugees are men – giving credence to other estimates that at least 650,000 of them are men of fighting age.
The survey also found that the longer the war goes on, the less likely refugees are to return.
It’s a sobering finding for a nation that was already in deep demographic decline before the full-scale invasion – down to as few as 32 million people in the territory not occupied by Russian forces, with a birth rate of less than one child per woman. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, there were 52 million people in Ukraine.
The absence of all these people is already posing economic, social and military problems at a time when the country needs all the help it can get. If most of them don’t return, Ukraine’s war effort and economic recovery will suffer.
What the survey found
Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, the Center for Economic Strategy has published three studies of Ukrainian refugees. The latest is based on research conducted between December 2023 and January 2024.
While the center counts 4.9 million refugees, it can track only the 3.6 million living in democratic countries. The other 1.3 million are in Russia or Belarus.
Of the 3.6 million, the majority are women and children, but the share of men has risen — to 37 percent in January 2024 from 31 in August 2022. The share of children, meanwhile, dropped to 38 percent from 51 in May 2023, suggesting their families have returned to Ukraine.
Based on its latest findings, the center estimates that between 1.4 million and 2.3 million refugees will not return to Ukraine. It calculated that this would translate into losses of 3.9 to 6.3 percent of Ukraine’s pre-war economy.
The survey found that a slim majority of refugees (52 percent) said they would definitely or probably return. However, even among those who want to come back, 61 percent said they will not do so until after the war. The center found a big drop in the number of refugees who said they would “definitely return” compared to the first survey done in 2022 — from 50 to 26 percent.
The ability to find decent-paying jobs in Ukraine will also factor into their decisions, refugees said, and they are not optimistic; 65 percent of those surveyed expect the nation’s economy to deteriorate in 2024.
And in a finding that bodes poorly for recruitment efforts, the center found that women are 55 percent more likely to return than men, “who may be afraid that they will not be able to travel abroad again or will be punished if they cross the border illegally.”
Perhaps the most worrisome statistic for Ukraine is that figure of 650,000 fighting-age men believed to be living abroad – at a moment when the country needs every able-bodied soldier it can find. Ukraine needs more troops to counter an expected Russian summer offensive, and to give the soldiers currently fighting some rest – factors that drove this week’s decision to lower the draft age. To put the figure in perspective, 650,000 would represent more than double the estimated number of soldiers who have seen combat since Russia’s February 2022 invasion.
Yuriy Sak, a former adviser to Ukraine’s ex-Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov, told The Cipher Brief the government had contemplated coercive methods to compel men to return home – such as cutting access to their home bank accounts or not renewing their passports. Instead, the government’s approach has been to persuade them to return by appealing to their patriotism. Some have done so, he said, but he does not know how many.
On the economic front, Ukraine may never return to its pre-war high of $200 billion in GDP (reached in 2021) if millions of its citizens remain abroad.
Ukrainian refugees are earning wages, spending money and paying taxes where they live – and not in Ukraine. An already acute labor shortage caused by men joining the military and millions of women living outside the country has left business managers scrambling to fill vacancies. According to Reuters, a 2023 poll of some 500 businesses in Ukraine by the Institute for Economic Research and Political Studies found that one-third saw staff shortages as a key challenge.
The social costs, meanwhile, are staggering and impossible to count, measured in divided families, lost homes, broken relationships and financial devastation.
Agonizing personal decisions
When the Russians invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the plight of Ukrainian refugees seized the world’s attention – as did the warm welcome they received from much of central and western Europe. Now their continued absence is causing growing concern inside Ukraine – as well as sadness, anger, and disappointment among some who have stayed.
The Cipher Brief spoke to Ukrainian refugees in several different countries, who offered a range of reasons for staying abroad.
Sergii Avramenko, 36, has been living in Germany since the war began. In Ukraine, Avramenko worked as an elite fitness trainer whose clients included top politicians and businesspeople. He and his wife left Ukraine for a European vacation two weeks before the Russian assault. They are staying put in Hamburg, where his sister and mother also live.
“Would I return to Ukraine? Probably. But now, I do not see any prospects for the development of my family and myself in Ukraine,” Avramenko told The Cipher Brief. “Germany offers great opportunities for those who want to work and study, and that is what I love to do.”
Daria Gerasimenko, 32, lives in the Czech city of Ceske Budejovice. She has managed to stay one step ahead of the war for a decade.
Gerasimenko is from Luhansk, part of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region that Russia first invaded in 2014. She moved to Kyiv before the fighting started but made the decision to leave Ukraine for good the following year, after concluding that life would get “worse and worse” because of the war. Marriage and the birth of a daughter in 2016 delayed her exit plans. But when her Ukrainian husband landed a job as an auto mechanic in the Czech Republic, the entire family made the move.
Gerasimenko works as a hairstylist, as she did in Kyiv, and has learned the Czech language. “It’s easier to make money in the Czech Republic,” she says.
The survey suggests that millions of Ukrainians who left have made similar calculations. The center found that, compared to its two previous surveys, a higher proportion of refugees are now enjoying their lives abroad more than they did in Ukraine. They report satisfaction with the support they have received from host countries, and two-thirds say they have made friends among the local population.
Economically, the refugees are finding decent jobs. 60 percent said they now had higher incomes than they did before the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Anastasiya Sergiienko’s new home is on the southern coast of Turkey. In an interview with The Cipher Brief, she cited several reasons for staying where she is.
“I'm not planning to come back to Ukraine. Even before the war started, I wanted to move somewhere with a mild climate,” she said. “Southern Turkey, where I live now, has a good climate, cheap prices for fresh fruits and vegetables, and 320 sunny days a year.”
Beyond the weather and way of life, Sergiienko said that “as long as Vladimir Putin still rules our neighbor, I don’t feel safe in Ukraine, so I don't want to build my future family there.”
The safety issue – not the weather – is what keeps Svitlana Tuchynska in her new home in Ireland.
“I am staying,” Tuchynska, 40, told The Cipher Brief. “I have two boys, 7 and 4. I do not want my kids to spend their lives in fear in basements.” She said that Ireland gave her and her children a warm welcome. She has a job and lives in a small townhouse near Cork. "It’s a very relaxed outdoorsy life, a world away from Kyiv. And I love it.”
In Germany, Avramenko addressed the big question for any Ukrainian fighting-age men living abroad.
“I do not feel guilty for not being on the front lines because I am convinced that I can be of more use in other domains,” Avramenko said, "yet I do not exclude the possibility of my involvement in military actions in the future, recognizing that this war could touch every one of us.”
Avramenko said that while he may return, he doubts many of his fellow Ukrainians in Germany will do so. “They are simply living in their new reality, focusing on their own lives. I believe that if people here in Germany find jobs that cover all their basic needs, they’re unlikely to return to Ukraine."
On her flight to the Czech Republic more than two years ago, Gerasimenko said, “I had this feeling, I cannot explain it, that I won’t come back” to Ukraine. And she hasn’t, not even for a visit, and says she has no plans to do so. “I do not know the Ukraine that is now,” Gerasimenko said. “I remember the Ukraine before the war.”
The potential for more refugees
As Russia keeps pounding Ukraine with missile and drone strikes in major cities, it’s possible that a new wave of refugees may flee Ukraine. The recent attacks serve a dual purpose – destroying infrastructure and terrorizing the population, CNN analyst Michael Bociurkiw, who lives in Odesa, told the network in late March.
“Death by a thousand cuts,” Bociurkiw said. “Ukraine's best and brightest are scared too, and you can’t blame them. They’re leaving slowly, one by one, by the calculations and observations I’m making. The Kremlin knows very, very well what it’s doing with these strikes. It is psychological warfare as well.”
There are exceptions to the survey’s findings – offering glimmers of hope for the country.
Christina Antuzinska, a 26-year-old lawyer living in Berlin, fled Ukraine only days after the February 2022 invasion, as Russian forces were advancing toward Kyiv. But despite finding a host family and a job in the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, she sees her future in Ukraine.
Among her friends, “some people are already back at home in Odesa,” Antuzinska told The Cipher Brief. “I have lots of friends who didn’t even try to leave Ukraine when the full-scale war began. They were in the west of Ukraine.”
She understands why many won’t return: “It’s war and insecurity. They are afraid to die in Ukraine.” But she has visited Ukraine twice since she left, has close relatives there and has kept an apartment in Kyiv. She plans another visit in August, to guide a group of visiting German members of parliament.
“I already got used to insecurity in Ukraine and during the war,” she said.
The Center for Economic Strategy recommended government strategies to encourage refugees to come home after the war. It said Ukraine would need to cooperate with European Union countries, strive for rapid post-war reconstruction, offer financial and other assistance and simplify the reintegration of students.
But all those steps are conditioned on a Ukrainian victory - or a lasting peace.
President Volodymyr Zelensky continues to insist that defeating Russia is a prerequisite for refugees to come home. He told an audience at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in August that winning the war would be “the number one factor” in persuading Ukrainians to return. "The desire - not empty words – but the desire to be here. That’s the number two factor.”
Making a plea for more to return and for others not to leave, Zelensky lamented, “It's not clear who and what we are fighting for if there are no people here."
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief.
