When Nika arrived in Rome in 2022, Italy offered her a chance to get back to daily life and feel happy. But months after fleeing her hometown of Kharkiv, the Ukrainian teenager began to see some unsettling scenes of big city life as a reflection of her own uprooted existence.
She noticed people without homes on the streets, for instance. “Who knows, maybe they too had a good life and, because of the war or other reasons, they had to start from scratch,” she told UNICEF. “My biggest wish is to go back to my old life, maybe that’s why I feel close to those people who have gone through a similar change and are hoping to get back to some kind of normalcy … to be well again.”
Nika is one of the more than 6.2 million people who have fled Ukraine since Russia’s brutal war began in February 2022. An estimated 167,500 Ukrainian refugees arrived in Italy as of mid-August 2023, according to Statista, a German data-gathering firm. Many of the arrivals are women and children. UNICEF puts the number of children who have crossed Italy’s northern border since the war began at 50,000.
Love for Ukraine
Refugees in Italy, across Europe and beyond are looking for jobs, learning new languages and finding schools for their children. But even those like Nika, who have found moments of respite or opportunity abroad, say they miss their family, friends and homeland.
“My heart and my soul” are in Ukraine, Ivan Sakivskyi, a refugee from Odesa told Voice of America. Sakivskyi found work in the oil industry of North Dakota, a U.S. state that has long been home to many Ukrainians. Yet Sakivskyi doesn’t plan to stay long-term. “It’s my friends,” he said of why he hopes to return. “It’s my family.”
Refugees look for work
After arriving in New York, Krystyna Matafolova went looking for a job. Even this effort did not take her mind off of her mother’s safety. Matafolova left Ukraine after bombs fell on Mariupol. “It was very hard to leave because my mom is still there,” she told CBS News at a job fair in New York.
Marina Yankula’s search for work in Canada reminds her of the work she misses back home. She arrived in Calgary in April and by mid-July still had not found a job. Yet Yankula has seen other Ukrainians in Calgary succeed and is determined to make her way.
“I had a very good life in Ukraine, to be honest, and I have never thought about coming to another country,” Yankula told CBC News. “I will make here our wonderful life, and I will be [a] real Canadian and with Ukrainian soul.”
Nika, in Rome, dreams of returning to the country she fled when she was awakened by the sound of bombs falling on Kharkiv. What keeps her going, she told UNICEF, “is the hope of finding that same clear sky again when I am able to return home.”