Ukraine’s war has created millions of broken families
ACCORDING TO A survey conducted this year by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), an organisation that supports refugees all over the world, an astonishing 74% of Ukrainians report being separated from a close family member because of the war.
Anna Gorozhenko, a historical novelist, and her daughter, Yara, then just seven, fled the Russian advance and left their home in a Kyiv suburb in February 2022, just after the war started. Under martial law Ukrainian men between the ages of 18 and 60 cannot leave the country except by special permission; and so they had to leave Anna’s husband, Alex, behind.
They found sanctuary in the English city of York, where a local family took them in. Anna was able to find a job; Yara thrived at school with a new set of besties. Over time, Anna saw the marriages of many of her refugee friends fail; but Yara, still frightened, refused to go back to Ukraine, even for a visit. So Anna made the difficult decision to return to Ukraine last September, leaving Yara in Yorkshire, in a small house she rented in the village of Poppleton, in the care of her mother-in-law, Yara’s grandmother, who left her home in Ukraine to take her place.
Out of a pre-war population of around 40m, some 6m Ukrainians, mostly women and children, have taken refuge abroad. Another 3m or more have been internally displaced by the fighting, some since 2014 when the war in the Donbas began and Russia illegally annexed Crimea. Elderly parents and siblings are cut off in occupied territories; mothers and fathers serving in the army are deployed for months at a time. As the army has been stretched thin with new Russian offensives, home leave is often deferred.
What Ukrainians have begun to call “the Big War” is now in its third year. For families like Anna and Alex and Yara, there are awkward decisions to make, an often impossible tug between geography and financial considerations, and between children’s education and well-being and love.
Anna, now back in Kyiv, is not sure she made the right decision. Yara has changed over the seven months she hasn’t seen her. “She doesn’t cry any more,” says Anna. “I think she is trying to be strong. She feels like she has to be the head of the family now, to take care of her grandmother, to translate for her.” Anna throws herself into her work; for Alex it is also difficult. “At seven Yara was a little girl, now she’s almost a teenager.” When her father calls, Yara often says she is too busy to talk.
There are hundreds of thousands of similar stories. For the many fathers separated from their children, years of video calls don’t make up for the lack of physical, day-to-day contact.
Oleksiy (he prefers that his last name not be used), a kitesurfing coach in Kherson before the war, was initially glad that his partner, from whom he was separated, took his young son, Yan, now six, to Chicago. But he has not seen him for almost three years. “I see him growing up through the phone,” says Oleksiy. “He speaks English now. I make up games for him, like a Spiderman university where he has to complete certain tasks, like a certain number of jumps. But it’s a struggle. It’s a black hole. It’s the biggest pain, more than the pain from being under occupation, the war or anything else.”
Serving soldiers can travel outside the country, but the permissions required are often complicated to get. Denys Kulikov, a military psychologist, says that, after the fear of death, family separation is the second-most-common cause of psychological distress. “It affects soldiers’ morale: they are unhappy, sad, depressed,” even suicidal. He has seen cases where soldiers are “so upset that they haven’t been able to see their child for so long and they can’t leave the country, that they become so angry at not getting leave, that they stop wanting to obey orders.”
At the front, soldiers try to maintain relationships as best they can via intermittent internet connections to their families. Mr Kulikov says fathers often make videos of animals, trench cats, a unit’s mascot dog, even birds and mice, to bring a little lightness to their messages. Often, he says, single mothers serving in the army quit and go home. (Single parents are allowed to demobilise; and females make up 30% of the army.) It’s a painful irony, he says, that “the main motivation for a soldier is to protect his family and provide for his family, and at the same time, the main problem for them when they serve is that they can’t see their families.”
Women are increasingly travelling back and forth from their host countries and Ukraine to visit husbands, relatives and homes, says Joanna Nahorska, a spokesperson for the IRC. Some 4.6m of those who fled in 2022 may now have returned permanently. Ukrainians in the EU come under its temporary protection directive, which generally gives them access to the same rights and services as EU citizens. Though this has been renewed regularly and is valid at least until March 2026, more durable solutions have not been forthcoming; it is a life in limbo. It makes an impossible choice, says Ms Nahorska, “Do you continue to be abroad, to live in cognitive dissonance between two countries, or do you try to go back and live a normal life, amid the blackouts and air alerts?” ■
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