My funk over losing them deepened after I read a news story about a poll that shows 76 percent of Ukrainians living in Poland don’t want to return to their homeland and that 373,000 Ukrainians applied to work in Poland last year. As an American expatriate living in Ukraine for nearly seven years this round, I have seen this situation play out time and again, going back to my first trip here in 1996.
It happens all over the world — people leaving their home countries to live somewhere else. I did. But the reasons Ukrainians do so are familiarly depressing: high corruption, bad job opportunities and low salaries at home. My three friends didn’t want to leave. They simply calculated that the nation is not going to get any better soon for them, professionally or personally, and so they decided to lead their lives elsewhere.
My departed friends include one who went to study in Switzerland and who married a local Swiss guy, another who is studying in Belgium and looking for a way to stay and a third who accepted an airline job offer in the United Arab Emirates.
The trio I am thinking about all happen to be women in their 20s, but plenty of Ukrainian men are among the estimated six million Ukrainians who are no longer calling Ukraine home.
All three are patriotic. None are pessimists. I watched how the decision to leave took hold with each of them, at different paces in different places.
One came from the Donbas, where Russia is waging its war on Ukraine. Her father’s business struggled and then the family abandoned their home. Another had a monthly salary of $200, also in the Donbas, that was often paid late. A third just got depressed by working 9-to-6 every day in Kyiv and only being able to rent a room and buy groceries, leaving her with not enough money to help her sick mother in another city.
I won’t name them because it’s up to them to tell their stories publicly if they want to do so. The Kyiv Post will be happy to publish their accounts and those of others. On the 20th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence four years ago, we solicited stories from 15 Ukrainians for a feature called “Ukrainian Voices From Abroad.” They answered questions about why they left the nations and how their lives are today in their adopted homelands. The stories can be read here.
Ukraine’s streets are much lonelier without them. Of course, 45 million Ukrainians are staying, come hell or high water, and having families and building futures. They are joined by an expatriate community of probably some 100,000 people — if all the foreign students, diplomats and businesspeople are counted. All of us believe in this nation enough to invest our lives or fortunes here.
But I worry for Ukraine’s future when it can’t keep young people like my three friends — all talented, smart, educated, hard-working, upstanding citizens. They are role models, really, and could have helped build this nation if it had given them better chances. I don’t expect I will see any of the three back in Ukraine again, ever, except for the rare holiday visit home to relatives.
Ukraine’s leaders have a lot of challenges, with Russia’s war and with reviving a weak economy. But they shouldn’t lack for motivation to make real reforms, stimulate investment and battle corruption. They need to hurry, however, before more of Ukraine’s best and brightest head for the exits. The future depends on today’s actions.
Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected]
