By Kontur and AFP | 2024-02-13

VIENNA -- Iryna, Maryna and Katya -- three generations from one family -- fled their home in southern Ukraine just after the war started, hoping to return quickly.

But two years later, these hopes are fading.

Just a few days ago, a fresh attack blew off the roofs of many buildings in their home city of Mykolaiv.

"Ukraine's future is not clear. I think that the war will not stop, even in one or two years," said Maryna Troshchenko, 43, while showing photos of the damage sent by relatives still living in the port city.

Troshchenko, her mother and her daughter, who all now live in Vienna, are among six million Ukrainian refugees, marking the biggest exodus since World War II, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Germany and Poland host the largest populations, with about one million Ukrainian refugees in each country.

Incessant bombings and a lack of progress on the front make their return in the short term increasingly improbable.

'Started from scratch'

After months of housing problems and rejected résumés, Troshchenko finally landed a job in a supermarket, enabling the trio to move into their own apartment this year.

"I started from scratch" at the bakery department before being promoted to head cashier, said the former purchasing director who did not speak a word of German when she arrived.

"We are happy to have been able to accomplish so much in two years," the divorcee added.

Her daughter, Katya, 17, has managed to obtain her Ukrainian school graduation certificate while attending a Viennese high school, from which she expects to graduate next year.

Katya's grandmother Iryna Simonova, 64, meanwhile has been able to find a volleyball team to practice her favorite sport and has made friends.

But tears stream from her eyes as soon as she thinks of her home country. She recalls leaving behind her mother, who at 87 refused to join them.

At refugee help organisation Diakonie in Austria, workers note that many Ukrainian refugees have decided to try to settle after being paralyzed by the "dilemma of waiting" to return home.

"For a long time, it was very difficult for them to decide how to proceed further," said Sarah Brandstetter, deputy at Diakonie's Ukrainian refugee advice center.

"Two years later, the situation has changed -- people are now planning to stay in the country. They have their children here in schools. They want to build a future for themselves," she said.

But especially mothers of young children who find themselves alone to take care of them continue to struggle.

The initial surge of solidarity is running out of steam in some places.

In Austria -- which hosts some 80,000 Ukrainian refugees -- "the increase of energy costs and high inflation was a game changer," according to Christoph Riedl, a migration and integration analyst at Diakonie.

In neighboring Germany, anti-migration discourse is on the rise amid a spike in the number of asylum-seekers from outside Europe, weighing heavily on reception capacities.

Demographic challenge

Until March 2025, under European Union (EU) rules, Ukrainians are eligible for temporary protection, a status allowing them access to the labor market, housing, and social and medical assistance.

But what is next, observers wonder.

The EU should agree now on a lasting status, said Riedl.

"When a conflict lasts for two or three years, people change their minds. It's a reality check. They integrate; they have a new life," he said.

Faced with a real demographic challenge, Ukrainian authorities fear the massive exodus and -- in contrast to other nations -- want refugees to be able to return.

"We find a somewhat specific situation in Ukraine -- a country at war, which also wants to maintain the greatest possible connection with its population," said UNHCR Director for Europe Philippe Leclerc.

Katya Troshchenko too insists on the importance "for young Ukrainians to come back to rebuild Ukraine, to build a new, modern country, which will be in the EU too."

However -- still traumatized by the nights in air raid shelters at the start of the war -- she is "afraid" to return.

"I don't want to see how it's absolutely ruined by Russians, and I don't want to see my ruined childhood," she said.

And she has no illusions -- she will probably have to stay in Vienna for her university studies.

More than 10,000 civilian casualties

Meanwhile, Ukraine is counting the human cost of the war since the the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022.

The UN's human rights office said in mid-January it had confirmed the deaths of 10,382 civilians in Ukraine and a further 19,659 injured since Russia's invasion but added that the real number was likely higher.

The number of civilian casualties increased significantly in December 2023 and January 2024 compared with previous months, reversing a trend of decreasing civilian casualties earlier in the year, it said.

Almost 8,000 of the deaths were in Ukraine-controlled territory and more than 2,000 in zones occupied by Russia.

Ukraine's national police has recorded almost 10,000 civilian deaths, along with 7,000 missing and 11,000 injured in the territory it controls, according to an official on January 31.

But Ukrainian authorities say thousands more civilians were killed during the siege of the southern port city of Mariupol in the early months of war, before it was taken over by Russia.

A town hall official told Ukrainian television in February 2023 that at least 25,000 civilians had been buried in mass graves there.

Across the Russian border, at least 138 civilians have been killed, according to the Russian news site 7x7.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers

The military on both sides has kept its casualty figures under wraps because of their sensitivity. The last official figures date back to mid-2022 and are therefore to be treated with caution.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said in September 2022 that 5,937 Russian soldiers had been killed.

According to Kyiv, by August 2022, 9,000 Ukrainian troops had been killed.

All estimates since have come from foreign intelligence services.

Last August, The New York Times quoted US officials as putting Ukraine's military losses at 70,000 dead and between 100,000 and 120,000 injured.

On the Russian side, they estimated 120,000 dead and between 170,000 and 180,000 injured.

In a written response to a parliamentary question on January 29, UK Minister of State for the Armed Forces James Heappey put the Russian casualties at more than 350,000 dead and injured.

On February 8 the Ukrainian army estimated it had killed or injured more than 392,000 Russian troops since the invasion.

Kyiv does not specify whether the tolls include losses among pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and mercenaries from the Wagner paramilitary group or just the Russian army.