Over the past month, the authorities of Ukraine at various levels have directly and veiledly signaled that Ukrainians who have gone abroad must return. He said, the economy will not build itself, and the budget will not fill itself. But have the authorities taken everything into account, will the country be able to provide jobs, education and housing for millions of people. Especially those who lost everything during the war.
For the first time, President Volodymyr Zelenskyi used the opposition " to be a refugee or a citizen" in his New Year's address. In fact, he urged those who left to return and live according to the rule "either you work or you fight."
Subsequently, Bankova went even further. Serhiy Leshchenko, adviser to the head of the president's office, called on the countries that sheltered Ukrainians to "stop supporting refugees so that they can return home."
And Zelensky himself suggested that the governments of these states redirect payments for refugees directly to the budget of Ukraine. However, his wife Olena Zelenska was not so categorical and admitted that "it is wrong to force people to return."
The government's attacks on refugees provoked a mixed reaction in society.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia, more than 6 million Ukrainians have gone abroad. Mostly women with children. For many, Ukraine does not look like a safe place to live, for some there is simply nowhere to return, others are worried about whether the state will be able to provide their children with a full-fledged education.
On the one hand, people for the economy mean more consumption, more taxes and additional hands in the labor market. On the other hand – expenses for social benefits, burden on education, medicine and infrastructure.
So will Ukraine withstand the sudden return of millions of Ukrainians, if they really heed the calls of the authorities?
Money, personnel, GDP
Experts admit that there is a grain of rationality in the appeals of the Ukrainian authorities.
The income of one migrant in the first year of his stay in the USA amounts to more than 100,000 dollars, and the long-term economic effect reaches 1.7-2 million dollars, explains Anatoly Amelin from the "Ukrainian Institute of the Future".
"A person who comes, consumes, works, rents housing or even takes a loan and buys it, is the basis for the development of the economy," says the expert.
Even children who do not work themselves stimulate the economy of the country where they live.
According to the pre-war study of the "Ukrainian Future Institute", in order to raise a child from birth to 18 years old, the average Ukrainian family spent from 80 to 100 thousand dollars on taxes, goods and services.
For every year that a child lives, for example, in Poland, they spend about 5 thousand dollars on additional consumption, Amelin explained. This is twice as much as the social assistance that the Polish government pays for each Ukrainian child per year.
Even if a Ukrainian has left, but continues to pay taxes in Ukraine, working remotely, the income and taxes from his consumption abroad fully cover the services he receives in the country that sheltered him.
This is education for children, and medicine , and the use of roads, clarifies the executive director of the Center for Economic Strategy, Hleb Vyshlinskyi.
"From the point of view of goals and economic sense, everything is right," says the expert about the calls of the authorities to return.
In order for Ukraine to exist as a state and the budget to be replenished, able-bodied people are needed, agrees Olga Pyschulina, an expert at the Razumkov Center on gender and social issues.
The shortage of personnel on the labor market is already felt, confirms one of the largest Ukrainian job search services, Work.ua.
If at the beginning of the invasion the market collapsed - the number of vacancies decreased by 10 times, and the number of job seekers increased by 7.5 times, then two years later, the shortage of jobs was replaced by a shortage of personnel, Yevgenia Kuzenkova, an analyst and editor of Work.ua, told BBC Ukraine.
However, the distribution of this demand is uneven. Naturally, the fewest vacancies are in the regions closest to the front - Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Kherson regions. Most of them are in the central and western regions. After all, business, like people, migrated to safer regions.
"In Zakarpattia Oblast, the labor market has recovered by 167% — there are significantly more employers than before the full-scale invasion, and there are simply not enough candidates for everyone," Kuzenkova explains.
The greatest demand for specialists. Doctors and pharmacists, as well as labor specialties (miner, sheet metal worker, cutter, sawmiller, tinter, roofer) are especially scarce.
Come back, but not all?
At the same time, experts admit that, calling on people to return, the authorities probably do not mean those who lived in Ukraine on social benefits, had a disability or family members with a disability and had no other income. After returning, they would rather become a burden on the budget.
"Now this burden has been taken over by other countries, mainly Western European countries, they have provided enormous support," says Olga Pyschulina.
Even the hype on the labor market does not apply to all categories, emphasizes Yevgenia Kuzenkova from Work.ua.
"In Ukraine, there is not just a shortage of personnel, but a shortage of qualified personnel. "Employers receive dozens of reviews for vacancies that do not require special education, but it is difficult for them to find employees for positions that require certain education or skills," she explains.
The only exception is IT. Here the market is oversaturated with the offer. The number of reviews for one vacancy is approximately 20-30 times higher than the labor market average.
As for those categories that cannot do without state aid, the Ukrainian economy can barely cope with the existing social payments.
Even more. On March 1, the government announced a reduction in payments for internally displaced persons (IDPs).
Now there are almost 5 million IDPs in the country, half of them receive monthly payments. We are talking about more than modest amounts - from 2 to 3 thousand hryvnias per month. In Germany or Italy, refugees receive about 300-500 euros per month for each family member. In addition, refugees are often provided with free housing in Western countries.
But even such sums are burdensome for Ukraine. According to the Ministry of Finance, in 2023, more than UAH 73 billion was spent on payments to IDPs from the budget, which is twice as much as the cost of all communal subsidies in the country. From March, only a narrow circle of people will be able to apply for this symbolic support.
Iryna Vereshchuk, the Deputy Prime Minister for the Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories, said that this was "a demand of our partners."
"Vulnerables should continue to receive payments, and those who have already, for example, adapted or received housing, or have a well-paid job... approaches should be fairer," Vereshchuk explained.
The government set the bar for high-paying work at the level of UAH 9,444 monthly income per person. Yevhen Sosnovsky, who left occupied Mariupol and lost everything, including his home, is outraged by this decision of the authorities.
"Those 9,444 hryvnias should be enough for you to rent housing for 12,000 hryvnias, to pay utilities for 3,000 hryvnias, to eat, to travel, to dress, and for many other necessities," he writes. .
"If the authorities want to return people from abroad to Ukraine, the authorities must first turn their faces to those people who believed in Ukraine and did not leave it."
Programs to restore damaged and destroyed housing in Ukraine also work sporadically and imperfectly, much depends on the initiatives of local authorities and foreign donors.
Sosnovsky complains that those whose homes were destroyed in the occupied territory, like his, do not currently have a mechanism to receive at least some kind of compensation.
And it is unlikely that the economic situation in the future will contribute to the fact that the country will be able to increase financial support for those who suffered the most.
Currently, Ukraine spends almost everything it earns on the army. The state is able to cover the remaining expenses – for the public sector, medicine, education, pensions – thanks to the funds received from the allies.
Last year, to close the hole in the budget, Kyiv received almost 37.5 billion dollars from international partners, this year it hoped to receive 42 billion. But it is already clear that the sums will be more modest than Kyiv expected.
This year, the European Union allocated its part of the package with a long delay, and the US still cannot agree on its share of aid.
Are there enough kindergartens?
An important factor of return is safety and education for children.
Olga from the Kyiv region, who took her three children abroad during the war, says that until recently she could not even consider the option of returning - neither the kindergarten nor the school in her town worked offline due to the lack of shelter.
If she were to return, working full-time "with children on my mind" would be unrealistic, she admits.
"Now the school's windows have been covered with sand, the kindergartener goes to a nearby shelter," the woman says. - It's still symbolic, but why wasn't it done earlier? The school actually did not work for a year and a half."
Over the past year, the state has made considerable efforts to improve the situation with shelters, according to data provided by the Ukrainian Air Force to the Ministry of Education.
More than 83% of kindergartens in Ukraine have a shelter either on their own or no further than 100 meters away. In schools, the situation is even better - there are shelters in more than 88% of schools.
The worst situation is in the frontline regions - Zaporizhia, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv and Kherson. Even where there is shelter, face-to-face education is not available due to regular shelling.
Cities like Kharkiv even have to undertake projects of underground schools and kindergartens, so that children have the opportunity to study face-to-face.
"Storage facilities are a problem," admits Ivanna Kobernyk, co-founder of the "SmartEducation" organization. - Not everywhere there are shelters, they have enough places. Therefore, schools work in a second shift or in a mixed format. A few days at school, and a few days remotely."
Another important question is whether there will be enough places in the Ukrainian education system for children who have gone abroad, if their parents really decide to return.
Experts assure that there will be enough schools, kindergartens, and teachers.
"The education system will endure. We were afraid that it would not last in February, but now we are adapting," Serhiy Babak, deputy from the Servant of the People faction and head of the parliamentary committee on education, science and innovation, told BBC Ukraine.
According to his calculations, 3.7 million children currently study in Ukrainian schools. Of these, 2 million are full-time, about 900,000 are distance learning, and about 900,000 are in a mixed format.
According to his data, there are about 390,000 children abroad (according to EU institutions, there will be 500,000 Ukrainian students in EU schools in 2022). Moreover, 245,000 of them continue to study remotely in Ukrainian schools.
"If they return to Ukraine, it will not change anything for them. If their schools worked in dangerous regions or there is no shelter in the school, they will still continue to study remotely," Babak explains.
He admits that due to internal migration, the system became unbalanced - children were moved from dangerous regions to safer ones. So there are regions where schools are practically empty. But there is no problem of overcrowded schools even in the deep rear, experts are convinced.
According to the Ministry of Education, the number of students in Kyiv is still almost 10,000 less than in the pre-war 2020-2021 school year (a total of 286,000 students). In rear Lviv, the number of children increased by 3 thousand (a total of 89 thousand children), in Uzhhorod and Chernivtsi the number of children did not change (17 and 28 thousand students, respectively).
"In Kyiv, in some districts, there is a serious lack of kindergartens, the least number of children in Pechersk district - both in schools and in kindergartens," says Babak.
"There are free places in schools," confirms Ivanna Kobernyk. "In gymnasiums and lyceums, where you couldn't get in before, you can find a place in the class."
In addition, the system is balanced by the opening of exclusively remote classes in all regions to free up physical places for children where it is possible to study face-to-face, says Babak.
In the rear regions, the demographic crisis also played into the system's hand, which threatened even war, experts add.
"The decline of children in schools was predicted due to the low birth rate, that is, even without a full-scale invasion, the number of children in schools would still decrease. Therefore, there will physically be places in schools if parents decide to return," says Kobernyk.
And he emphasizes that an important factor will be the quality of education offered by Ukrainian schools. In conditions where all resources are devoted to safety, quality risks taking a back seat.
"Many women stay abroad because of education. Because of the opportunity to be in another system, learn a foreign language. Therefore, an important factor is what content will be filled with this physical availability of seats," the expert adds.
To people as to slaves?
The main conclusion made by experts. The return of able-bodied people and their children is of fundamental importance for the economy.
But the way the Ukrainian authorities formulate their call to return does not stand up to criticism.
"You have to be careful with this," emphasizes Olga Pyschulina. - Certain lines of division are already appearing in Ukraine - those who left and those who remained, those who fought and those who did not fight. We need to avoid this split."
Anatoly Amelin criticizes the authorities for the fact that in their appeals they treat people as a resource, and not as "beneficiaries of the country".
"We treat people like slaves, it's like some kind of serfdom," says the expert. - If you treat people like a money bag, then no one will stay in this country. It needs to be changed, and people will come back."
In his opinion, corruption scandals and high-profile persecution of business representatives do not contribute to the return of Ukrainians. A comfortable business climate is a key factor in the return of people, he is convinced. And war is not an obstacle to this.
"Israel or South Korea have been at war since the first day of their creation, and the number of citizens is growing every year, the economy is growing," says Amelin.
"They bet on technology and innovation. Ukraine does not stimulate innovation. Only you open an enterprise, tax officials come to you, as soon as you do something, security forces come to you."
The country will have to fight for the return of its people, all experts interviewed by BBC Ukraine agree. Because in many European countries they are not interested in them going.
And even more so, none of these countries will revise their social support programs for refugees for the sake of Ukraine, as President Zelensky calls for this.
Each category requires its own approach, says Vyshlinskyi.
If we are talking about those who lost everything during the war, Ukraine will have to offer something more than "a place to sleep in the gym and meager social support."
These should be complex solutions. For example, the creation of clusters with donor funds in safe, but depressed regions before the war, where business centers with jobs, housing and infrastructure are simultaneously being built.
"That is, people come to work as per a contract, get housing, settle down and can go to work right away," Vyshlinsky suggests.
The most difficult thing will be to fight for a group of conditional labor migrants, for whom the war has become a long-dreamed-of chance to leave and quickly legalize in Western countries, he suggests.
Much more promising is a large group of people who left for security reasons. Some of them are now hesitant to return. For example, he wants to reunite his family.
"For such people, a combination of small factors can be decisive, it can be the presence of a job, school or kindergarten," the economist adds.
Research by the Razumkov Center, published on January 31, indicates that the main factors of return for Ukrainians from abroad are economic recovery and revitalization of the labor market, issues of safety and comfort of life, substantial payments to returnees (for example, compensation for housing).
"At the same time, the majority of refugees will not be ready to participate in the reconstruction of the country and would seek to return to the already restored country," the researchers concluded.
Ella Libanova, director of the Institute of Demography and Social Research named after M. V. Ptukha, emphasizes that even under the most optimistic scenario, no more than half of those who left will return to Ukraine.
After the war in the Balkans, only a third of the population returned to their countries, the scientist reports.
"If we think that European countries will begin to displace Ukrainians en masse, they will not. They are very interested in such a workforce, the expert says. "And every day of the war works to ensure that fewer people return."
