Tragedy and Farce. How and Why Displaced People Return to Occupation

Their routes run through occupied Ukrainian cities to some Russian ones, then through the territory of Belarus to the Belarusian-Polish border and Warsaw, from where they travel through Ukrainian cities. Similarly, they travel back through Poland, Belarus and the Russian Federation. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine, there has been no direct transport connection between Ukraine and the Russian Federation, but detours have appeared.

Donetsk-Lviv, Kyiv-Moscow, Warsaw-Donetsk, Moscow-Kyiv, Donetsk-Kyiv, Warsaw-Luhansk, Vinnytsia-Luhansk, Kyiv-Donetsk. These are specific routes of hundreds of real people, carried out by commercial carriers. There are at least five or six such companies, large and proven, each of which runs on schedule, all loaded with passengers.

Dozens of trips per month.

There are two types of routes: for those who have passports of the Russian Federation and those who do not. The first are taken from Ukraine along this large detour route, the others only to Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport. There is a transfer either only in Warsaw, or in Warsaw, Minsk and Moscow, but carriers claim that transfers are simply door-to-door. That is, the passenger pays once for the entire trip in any case.

Not only forcibly displaced persons return to the occupied territories, but also refugees to the European Union and those who spent the first months and years after the start of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation. Most of them, when asked about the reasons for their return, will answer with one phrase: “Home is home.” But they also return for other reasons, namely because of relatives, fear of losing their only property, despairing of being able to overcome poverty.

300–400 euros, approximately three days of travel. Have an internal Russian and biometric Ukrainian international passports with you. For those who do not have Russian passports, there is a different route. It runs in this way: from Warsaw, people are taken to Minsk Airport, from where they often fly to Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport.

Since October 2023, Sheremetyevo Airport has been the only checkpoint through which Ukrainian citizens who do not have Russian passports can enter the Russian Federation. If they are allowed into the country. In two terminals of the airport — for those who arrived from Belarus and those who had flights from other countries — Russian border guards conduct the so-called filtration. The Russian border service checks documents, asks questions, looks at contacts, correspondence, transactions, browser history on smartphones. It is worth noting that Russian border guards ultimately refuse entry to many people. Such people who did not pass the filtration are sent by plane to where they came from.

I saw in a chat how one carrier wrote to a person who did not pass the filtration and was sitting in Minsk that they would be taken to Warsaw for free, because it was this carrier that brought this person.

No one has the amount, but there are statistics

No one can currently calculate the reliable total volume of such migration. In October 2024, on the anniversary of the introduction of filtration at Sheremetyevo, the Russians reported 107,000 Ukrainian citizens who tried to pass border control at the Moscow airport. The Russian border guards allegedly let 83,000 people through. However, it is worth noting that none of those who know about the filtration, let alone have passed it themselves, believe in the veracity of this figure. They believe that the proportion of people who have passed successfully is much smaller.

There is no mention of those who travel by land. They cross the Belarusian or Russian border with Russian passports, so they are counted as citizens of the Russian Federation. According to the Polish border service, almost 78,000 Ukrainian citizens entered Poland from Belarus in January-September 2024.

It is worth noting that this is twice as many as in the same period in 2023, before the Russian Federation actually closed entry to Ukrainian citizens. Thus, the statistics show that the number of border crossings increased in the last quarter of 2023, when almost 16 thousand more Ukrainian citizens crossed the Polish-Belarusian border. For comparison, 12.5 thousand Ukrainian citizens entered Poland from Belarus in the whole of 2021. Some of the almost 78 thousand who entered Poland from Belarus in 2024 probably lived in Belarus or visited relatives there. The rest were supposed to be those who left either from the Russian Federation or from the occupied territories of Ukraine. Some of them were probably sent from Sheremetyevo Airport.

Other people were supposed to be holders of two passports.

The Belarusian Border Guard Service claims that from January to December, almost 101 thousand Ukrainian citizens entered “transit” through Poland (another almost 24 thousand — “transit” through Lithuania). It is worth noting that these are only those people who entered with a Ukrainian passport. Of those who have Russian passports, not all, of course, travel by land. In addition, dozens, perhaps hundreds of people freely move by plane both to and from the Russian Federation.

Of the total number of Ukrainian forcibly displaced persons and refugees, such travelers are in any case a small share. However, it is worth noting that these are still several hundred thousand people a year who commute between the European Union, Ukraine and the Russian Federation, return to the occupied territories of Ukraine or travel to the Russian Federation from Ukraine or from abroad.

“Hostile narrative”?

All these fruitless arithmetic calculations would have made no sense if it were not for the unfortunate episode of political drama that the country witnessed at the end of November. Then, the People's Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine from the “Servant of the People” party, the head of the working group on housing issues of the parliamentary commission on the protection of the rights of forcibly displaced persons, Maksym Tkachenko, in an interview with the Ukrainian national information agency “Ukrinform”, spoke about the return of forcibly displaced persons to the occupied territories of Ukraine or their departure abroad due to the lack of state assistance and decent wages.

According to Maksym Tkachenko, about 150 thousand forcibly displaced persons have already returned to the occupied territories. The people's deputy did not emphasize the number, but cited it as an illustration of what appeared to be a reasoned criticism of the state's policy regarding forcibly displaced persons.

Presumably, this was the reason for the reaction of the Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Iryna Vereshchuk, who until recently headed the relevant ministry. Iryna Vereshchuk took this figure into account as a weak point in Maksym Tkachenko’s statements and began to refute it, calling the people's deputy an “irresponsible fan of hype” who does not respect forcibly displaced persons and “supports a hostile narrative.” “I will never believe that thousands of Ukrainians are going to the territories occupied by the Russian Federation because of the lack of two to three thousand hryvnias per month in state aid,” Iryna Vereshchuk said.

In addition, she insisted that, no matter how difficult it is to live in the free part of Ukraine, it cannot be worse here than in the territories temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation. Iryna Vereshchuk also claimed that the decrease in the official number of forcibly displaced persons is due to the fact that some of them have returned to the territories liberated from occupation or gone abroad.

People's deputy Maksym Tkachenko eventually refused the statement about 150,000, calling it "unfounded and emotional."

At the same time, Petro Andryushchenko, who had previously written about a large number of forcibly displaced persons, in particular from Mariupol, who had allegedly returned to the destroyed and occupied city, resigned from his post as an advisor to the mayor of Mariupol. This same number — approximately one in three of the 200 thousand forcibly displaced Mariupol residents — was cited in an interview by Maksym Tkachenko, and was also mentioned in a speech by the mayor of Mariupol Vadym Boychenko.

In addition, earlier this year, the Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets and the same Maksym Tkachenko spoke about the return of forcibly displaced persons to their occupied cities and villages. The former pointed to the trend and reasons, but not the numbers, while the latter stated in June about “almost 130 thousand people”.

Both statements had no less resonance than the notorious interview, but not in the office of the President of Ukraine.

“Home is home”

Between 2014 and 2022 — from the annexation of Crimea and the beginning of the war in eastern Ukraine to the full-scale Russian invasion — the number of forcibly displaced persons in Ukraine fluctuated between 1.5 and 2 million people. It was no secret to anyone that a significant part of these people, mostly pensioners — actually lived under occupation and registered in the territory controlled by Ukraine only in order to continue receiving pensions.

The State Border Service of Ukraine registered more than a million crossings of the contact line per month. People who gossiped disparagingly referred to this human flow as tourists of retirement age.   In addition, it is worth noting that even before 2022, many people who lived in the occupied territories received Russian passports. After the annexation of all occupied territories of Ukraine by the Russian Federation in September 2022, obtaining Russian citizenship there became mandatory. It is also worth noting that those people who do not receive Russian documents by the end of this year will have only the rights of foreigners in their native cities and villages. Many real forcibly displaced persons did not leave their cities far to visit relatives and look after property or simply to be in places that were not native, but most similar to their native places, where they also had certain social ties and where they were not offended or discriminated against for their regional origin. The demarcation line not only divided the territory and families, but also destroyed long-standing logistical, cultural, and economic ties. Many of those people who found themselves directly on both sides of it said that above all they would like reunification, no matter under whose rule they were.

After 2022, when all these settlements were “reunited” by the occupiers, the fighting was so intense that for those who, by their own will or by force, found themselves as forcibly displaced persons on the Ukrainian side, it became pointless to settle as close to their native places as possible.

To get to them, it was no longer a 20–40-minute journey to the nearest checkpoint, but a journey of several days across several state borders. But some of those places eventually became the rear areas of the occupation. For a person whose main reason for leaving was the fighting itself, it would be illogical to continue traveling instead of returning home.

People return to temporarily occupied territories for other reasons as well. Some because of relatives who were unable to leave, others because of poverty and the fading of any hope of overcoming it. A significant number of people also return because of the threat of losing their only property, when the occupation administrations conduct a total inventory and declare all housing in which the owners do not live “ownerless.” Almost all Ukrainian citizens have never left the occupied territories for the same reasons.

The only thing that those in Ukraine who have no money and no shelter from relatives can count on now is a bed in a makeshift shelter in a former school, kindergarten, or dormitory. These people have work, but mostly not enough to pay for decent housing, state assistance is also meager and temporary, and state policy towards forcibly displaced persons is inconsistent and unpredictable.

For example, the eOselya program with 25% of the first cash payment, which officials report, is clearly not designed for forcibly displaced persons. People who have lost everything due to war and occupation do not have such money. In addition, such people also have no prospect of buying housing in a city where there is at least some official work with the prospect of a pension. It is worth saying that all these are details that are not visible to those who do not live in this reality. But which play a key role in the life of an individual and a family.

It is worth noting that even local officials who sincerely want to help forcibly displaced persons cannot act effectively due to the norms, regulations and programs that are constantly changing, being canceled, and being renewed. In a state and society where almost, everyone has to worry about their own survival and where many of the younger, wealthier, educated and active have been able to find refuge in other countries, forcibly displaced persons have become almost invisible over the past two years.

State communication, as can be seen from the story of Maksym Tkachenko and Iryna Vereshchuk, has degraded to primitive propaganda, meaningless to those who know everything from their own experience and who are told about life in the occupied territories every day by relatives, friends and neighbors.

New realities

In order to maintain ownership of property in the occupation, one must not only be present when it is checked for inventory, but also have Russian documents with them.

Those who were allowed through the filtering process are advised not to travel again until they receive a Russian passport and take the oath of citizenship, because they may not be allowed through the filtering process again.

Denial of entry into the country is a tragedy for thousands of Ukrainian citizens, because it looks like a lifelong one. After all, most are banned from entering the territory of the Russian Federation for 20 or more years. The official explanation for such measures is concern for the safety of Russians, but they protect them in this way not only from healthy youth, but also from 70-80-year-old elderly women. It is worth noting that there is no upper age limit for checks and refusals. “Settling in another country for a serious and long stay. It is not worth spending money on the courts, because you will get rejections all the time. Those who can solve problems should not be paid, because they are scammers, and there are no other ways to solve problems," wrote experienced administrators of specialized Telegram channels.

During the year of the Moscow filtration point's operation, a network of specialists in navigating Russian legislation regarding Ukrainians, logistics, infrastructure, communications, a new professional niche for administrators, dispatchers, drivers, consultants, lawyers...

Everything indicates that the demand for their services will grow.

Undoubtedly, many have questions about the moral aspect of the return of Ukrainians to the occupied territories. But it is worth facing the truth. After all, in our society there is a part of people who will never live under occupation, and there are those who will. People will make such a decision for various reasons, which we have already mentioned. And this is another reality that the state needs to finally see, accept and decide what to do with it. What signals to give to our people in the occupied territories after 2022, until they become completely strangers to us. As those who fell under occupation after 2014 have already become.

In order to preserve statehood, the government must be wiser and more cunning. And if you don't educate, then buy, if you will, patriotism. We can create as many ministries as we want with nice names about national unity or even eternal love, but returning people to places where there is no basis for those who remain is simply insincere and manipulative.

However, this applies not only to the state, which is critically sluggish in programs for forcibly displaced persons, but also to society. Remember how in western Ukraine people raised apartment rental prices immediately after the full-scale invasion. This is also about us. And about the morality of those whose house, by coincidence, did not fall under occupation. We will have to reflect on who and what we are for a long time.