Sociologist assessed the chances of Ukrainian refugees returning.

Will Ukrainian refugees return after the war?

The director of the Sociological group 'Rating', Oleksiy Antipovych, stated that Ukrainian refugees who left for abroad have already settled into their lives there. Thus, in his opinion, if martial law is lifted, the number of those who return will be balanced.

'Because you ask the average refugee abroad: do you want to return to Ukraine? 'Yes, of course.' And how do you assess the chances that you will return, under what conditions? And then as a researcher, you start to dig deeper and realize that the person has already gotten so entrenched in the new circumstances, the new realities of their life, that the issue of returning is no longer so straightforward. Not to say - it is not at all on the agenda.'

According to the sociologist, most refugees come from the east and south of Ukraine, namely: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and Kharkiv regions. Antipovych is confident that having gone abroad, people have already adapted to their new life, so not everyone will want to return to their homeland.

'Did the residents of Lviv not leave? Or the inhabitants of Uzhhorod, Chernivtsi, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk? Many left as well. Why don’t they return? Because it’s better there. Because they are already well there.'

The sociologist also noted that refugees' attitudes towards Ukraine and the Ukrainian authorities may even be better, and the former geographical distance may make it even warmer: 'Germany is better than Poland. And in the USA, I think, you can generally love mother Ukraine endlessly.'

Therefore, even after the war ends, not all Ukrainian refugees who left the country may wish to or be able to return, as they have already adapted to new lives abroad.