Foreigners who made Ukraine home stay put, despite war

It was just three months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, but Marwa Yehea wanted to return to her home in Kyiv.

Yehea, 31, who is originally from Syria, had fled the Ukrainian capital with her two daughters that February when the war began. In those early days of uncertainty, she was pregnant with her third child, and they spent weeks in Germany.

But she was determined to be back home by the time her son was born. By May 2022, they had returned to Kyiv in time for his birth.

“The war hasn’t ended, and the psychological toll that takes is tiring,” Yehea said during an interview in Kyiv this summer. “But you get used to it. And us especially, as Syrians who emerged from war — well, here we’re secure.”

In the decades before the Russian invasion, Kyiv had become an increasingly cosmopolitan city, a destination for international students and professionals looking to make their lives in Europe. Before the war, some 293,600 foreign nationals were residing permanently in Ukraine, according to government figures from 2020.

Wang Zheng, 23, who is from China and has been studying in Ukraine since 2017, exits the metro with his girlfriend in Kyiv.

Some have made the unlikely decision to continue living here, even as war grips the country and millions have fled. In some instances, returning to their country of origin is impossible, and they have stayed in Ukraine rather than becoming refugees for a second time. Others are simply unwilling to walk away from the lives they have built in the country.

“We were happy here — our lives here were good, praise God,” said Yehea, who had been living in Ukraine since 2012. “We’ve lived comfortable lives here.”

International college students have also returned, weighing the value of an affordable education against the risks of war.

Wang Zheng, 23, who is originally from China, had been studying in Ukraine since 2017 and was just starting to work toward his master’s degree when the war began. He went back to China and continued his studies online but returned to Kyiv last spring. His education “is the most important thing,” he said, adding, “I can’t give up.”

Kyiv is where he first met his girlfriend, Wang Danyang, 26, a trained opera singer who is also from China. She returned to Kyiv in July and they moved in together. They want to build their life here, Wang said. “I feel like this is my second motherland,” he said.

Some 76,500 foreign students were enrolled in Ukrainian universities in 2020, with the largest per cent coming from India.

Two students from that country, Jaanvi, 20, who has a legal single name, and her roommate, Mary Fiona, 22, were studying medicine in Kyiv when the war broke out. Jaanvi had arrived in December 2021, just months before the Russian invasion began, and fled four days into the fighting.

She and other Indian students were told that Ukrainians were being given priority to board trains leaving the city, and she waited for hours. She finally made it to the Polish border, but foreign students again faced delay, an issue that many of those from Asia and Africa recounted at the time.

Fiona, who had lived in Ukraine for four years, said that she experienced some discrimination in Ukraine before the war, which she described as “painful,” but that overall she had a positive experience living here.

Zyad Hakim, 24, had spent five years studying mechanical engineering at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute when the war started and was unwilling to simply walk away from the work he had completed.

Hakim, who is originally from Morocco, returned there at the start of the war but then came back to Kyiv in January 2023 to finish his final semester. He completed his degree this summer and then moved back to Morocco.

“I needed to come here and complete it,” he said in Kyiv, just days before he left. “Otherwise, all of my work would go into the gutter — into the abyss.”

Even some whose life here has not been ideal still say Ukraine is their home.

Abdullah Hossein al Rabii, 40, who owns a popular restaurant in Kyiv near the Islamic Center, moved there in 2013 after fleeing Syria’s civil war. He serves falafel, hummus, shawarma and other Middle Eastern dishes, and he can usually be found at the grill out front, greeting his mostly Ukrainian patrons with a warm smile as the smoke swirls around them.

“I’m not stuck in Ukraine,” he said. “I don’t want to leave.”

But al Rabii lives in limbo, as do thousands of other Syrians who came here. They were never given full refugee status by Ukraine, but instead have been afforded “complementary protection,” which is temporary and provides no path to permanent residency.

Al Rabii’s Syrian passport has expired, and he hasn’t seen his family in Syria — or left Ukraine — in a decade.

Many Syrians in Ukraine fled elsewhere in Europe when the war began, looking for safety and a more stable future. But Al Rabii, who is married to a Ukrainian woman, is committed to staying.

“The worst thing is that you were a refugee before, then you fled, and then you could become a refugee again,” he said. “This would hurt the most.”

- The New York Times