Almost a quarter of Ukrainian refugees said they want to stay in Europe long-term and settle outside Ukraine, even after the end of the conflict. Another 25 percent of them have not yet decided, according to the survey.
“Our results show that although many of the fled Ukrainians still want to return to their country, for the vast majority the decisive factor is the course of the war. The longer the conflict lasts, the more there are those who can imagine a future outside of Ukraine,” said Yvonne Giesingová, a researcher at the German Institute.
This is also proven by the fact that shortly after fleeing Ukraine, only ten percent of Ukrainians stated that they planned to live outside their country for a long time. By the end of 2023, however, this figure has increased by an average of 1.6 percentage points for every hundred days that have passed.
In contrast, almost 60 percent of Ukrainians wanted to return to Ukraine when the country would be safe again. But even this number dropped sharply, by 4.7 percentage points in one hundred days.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees stated that as of October 15, 2024, 6,752,000 Ukrainians had fled Ukraine to countries around the world. 6,191,800 of them fled to other countries in Europe. There were 380,375 of them on the territory of the Czech Republic as of October 6.
In addition, Ukrainian refugees have long been paying more to the Czech budget than the Czech Republic spends on their support. During the first half of this year, the country spent 7.3 billion crowns from the budget, but revenues were almost 11.7 billion crowns. Ukrainians thus earned 4.4 billion in the Czech Republic in the first half of 2024, according to information from the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs.
