One third of Ukrainian refugees in EU want to return home

One in three Ukrainian refugees feels they are part of a community in their host country — but the same number would like to return home, a new survey released Tuesday by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) shows.

“As the war drags on, we need to put in place effective long-term measures that allow host societies and displaced people to adapt to the upheaval resulting from this war,” said the director of FRA, Michael O’Flaherty.

14,685 Ukrainian refugees living in ten EU countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Spain) responded to the agency’s online survey between August and September 2022.

Although almost half reported feeling depressed, 61 percent said they had been feeling optimistic about the future since arriving in their host country.

Yet, with only a third of respondents in paid employment, 79 percent said they faced financial difficulties.

Language is the main obstacle to getting a job: A quarter said they did not speak the language of the country they now lived in, while 41 percent said they did, but poorly.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February created the largest refugee crisis seen on the Continent since World War II.

According to data from the U.N. Refugee Agency, more than 8 million Ukrainian refugees fled to another European country since the beginning of the war, and about 4.8 million have applied to a temporary protection scheme in a EU country.