One in three Ukrainian refugees want to return home

More than a third of Ukrainian refugees living in the European Union want to return home, according to a survey by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA).

The FRA surveyed 14,685 Ukrainians who moved to 10 EU nations including Germany, Italy, and Spain after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.

Here are a few of the study’s findings.

• 35% of Ukrainians hope to return home.
• 38% plan to stay in their host country.
• 23% are undecided.
• 4% want to go to a third country.

The report also looked at how many children fled Ukraine, and which parents, if any, they arrived in their host country with. Of the 324 respondents aged 12 to 17, the FRA found:

• 76% left with only their mother.
• 14% fled with both parents.
• 9% left alone.

“No matter how good it is in the country I am in, my heart and soul wants to go home, so much that I am ready to return despite the war and shelling,” a 34-year-old woman who fled to Estonia told the FRA. “I didn’t think that emotionally it would be so difficult, although local people do a lot to help us and this pleases my soul, but my thoughts are only about home and my husband.”