Ukrainians in Poland mull future amid talk of peace

On a cold and darkening Friday afternoon, school-aged children prepared to go home. They buttoned their jackets and wished each other goodbye, the older ones already buried in their cellphones and earbuds.

This typical school scene, which could have played out nearly anywhere, took place last week in Warsaw, Poland, at a site run by the large nonprofit Polish Center for International Aid (its Polish acronym is PCPM). The school and its seeming normalcy masked the students’ tough reality: These children are Ukrainian refugees, who came to Poland with their families to seek shelter from Russia’s war on their country.

The PCPM site conducts classes in Ukrainian, allowing some 220 students to socialize in a language they know better than Polish. It also helps knit together the refugee community in the metro Warsaw region. Calling itself an “education center” rather than an ordinary school, PCPM gives its students instruction and a crucial forum of support for a diaspora that may be setting more permanent roots.

Some PCPM students arrived recently, while others came in the first months after the war began in February 2022. Many of the adult employees are also Ukrainian. Several worked as teachers before the war. PCPM provides them a chance to keep working and earning, in a country where few Ukrainians possess the contacts or Polish language skills to navigate Poland’s job market on their own.

PCPM runs its Warsaw location with the twin goals of supporting Ukrainian refugee children and their families and easing the students’ integration into Polish life and society. The second task has taken on new urgency this school year, following a 2024 law requiring Ukrainian school-aged children in Poland to attend school in person. Previously, many Ukrainians had continued to study remotely via their schools in Ukraine, creating a fully online school day—and keeping them entirely separate from Polish schools and broader society.

That arrangement was at first an accommodation to Ukrainians in Poland, many of whom never planned to be away from Ukraine for long. But the Polish government seems to be making plans for at least some to stay past the war’s end. Under last year’s law, the Polish state provides aid to Ukrainians, including a payment of 800 Polish złoty (about $200) per child to cover the cost of school enrollment.

In January, the European Commission, a part of the European Union (EU), unveiled a $121 million package to support Ukrainian students in Polish schools. The package combines about $100 million from EU funds, and the remaining $21 million from Polish funds.

Overall, nearly 1 million Ukrainians have sought refuge in Poland, according to United Nations data. The refugees are overwhelmingly women and children.

Now, with a peace deal seemingly on the horizon, Ukrainian refugees face a difficult choice: return home to help rebuild, or try to make new lives in a foreign land where their children already feel at home?

On Feb. 12, President Donald Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone, calling the discussion the start of genuine peace negotiations and a “lengthy and highly productive phone call.” Later the same day, Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. No details from either call have been released.

The two, separate calls have revived fears among some Ukraine observers that Trump may wage a peace effort with Russia directly, putting Ukraine on the sidelines of its own peace deal. The Biden administration and European officials long urged a collective policy of inclusive peace talks, summed up in the pithy phrase, “Nothing about Ukraine, without Ukraine.”

While the refugees and their host countries wait for definite news, they’re also grappling with Trump’s January executive order to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). PCPM has never received funds from the U.S. humanitarian aid body, but it does compete for the same group of global, donor-provided funds that other nonprofits do, according to a PCPM representative I spoke with during my visit to the education center.

“Unfortunately, the sudden suspension of such a massive pool of funds as USAID is impacting the humanitarian sector” overall, the representative told me. “Because funding is being cut, it is harder for us to get funding for [our] projects, as the pool for which other organizations are applying is shrinking.”

Students attend a special session for Ukrainians to learn the Polish language, during the first day of school in Warsaw, Poland. AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski

THOUGH SHE SPEAKS excellent English, Ana Holova had never traveled outside Ukraine before Russia invaded. A former resident of Zaporizhia—the southeastern city and region that was a cradle of the mythic Cossack horseback warriors—Holova speaks with pride of her native city and its place in Ukrainian history. Last year, Holova fled with her mother and two boys, now 11 and 18, from their home. They eventually ended up in Warsaw, due to the large Ukrainian community there. Holova wanted her boys to become part of it.

A teacher by profession, with 20 years of experience behind her in Zaporizhia, Holova has again found a place in the classroom. She started at the PCPM center last September. Holova considers herself “very lucky” for having gotten her position, where she can draw from her long teaching career to pour into Ukrainian children like her own.

But that blessing is overshadowed by events back home. This past July, the Ukrainian military informed Holova that her husband, a soldier in the Ukrainian army, went missing in action. Since then, Holova has had no contact or news from him.

“I’m not sure if he’s still alive,” Holova said, her face darkening as she began to cry.

While her heart remains in Ukraine, Holova dismissed the idea that a peace deal would move her toward a return home—either quickly, or ever. After three years of Russian bombardments, much of her city is destroyed. A once-stable economy no longer exists. Friends and neighbors have left. Jobs have evaporated.

“The main problem is that I can’t plan anything,” Holova said. “I don’t know what will be tomorrow.”

As for her indefinite stay in Poland, Holova is determined to do the best in light of how the war might change her family forever.

“For three years, I don’t make plans longer than for a couple of days [into the future],” she said. “Only God knows what will be next.”

MANY OF THE UKRAINIAN refugees I spoke to in Poland talked about the challenges of living with constant uncertainty.

Another teacher at the Warsaw center asked that I use only her first name, Yulia, to protect parents and other family members still in Ukraine. Yulia hails from Kherson, a city in south-central Ukraine that, like Zaporizhia, has come under relentless Russian targeting throughout the war. In Warsaw, Yulia and her 11-year-old daughter share an apartment with the family of her sister, a longtime expat to the city.

Yulia arrived in Warsaw in August 2022, thanks to a deceptive cover and an international route worthy of a spy thriller. She was one of the Ukrainians able to escape Kherson during its nine-month Russian occupation between March and November 2022.

Ironically, Yulia had to travel through Russian-controlled territory to get past Russian control. Leaving occupied Kherson city, Yulia led her daughter south to Crimea, the southern Ukrainian peninsula under Russian occupation since 2014. In Crimea, the young mother lied to Russian authorities, saying she and her daughter intended to fly to the country of Georgia, on the eastern Black Sea coast, for a beach vacation with friends. The ruse worked, and the two flew from Crimea to Georgia, then Georgia to Poland. Yulia has taught at PCPM since October 2022.

Although they’ve been in Warsaw for only about 2½ years, Yulia’s little girl now corrects her mother’s Polish.

That and other signs of the child’s integration in Poland suggest that families like Yulia’s stay not just because they need to but because they want to. The young mother described a conversation she had recently with her daughter, who said she could hardly remember life in Ukraine before the war. The girl said she didn’t want to return to Kherson. Her friends, her school, her life were all now in Warsaw.

“I was shocked,” Yulia said. “Everything which I have here”—she laid her hands over her heart—“was in my shoes.”

But integration may present different challenges, and opportunities, across different generations.

Like Holova, Yulia expressed sincere thanks for the welcome she has received from Polish authorities and individuals. And she understands that the damage done to Kherson, as in Zaporizhia, will make a post-peace return harder, given the extent of physical and economic wreckage.

“If the war stops today, I can’t go there tomorrow,” Yulia said. “It’s difficult to build any plans,” she said, no matter what vision for peace lies ahead.

That reality is especially difficult because Yulia’s husband remains in Kherson, where he helps look after Yulia’s aging parents. Though he is not in the military, his presence in Ukraine complies with current martial law, in force since 2022, which forbids men aged 18-60—any male who might possibly assist in fighting—from exiting the country, with some exceptions.

“I’m grateful to be here,” Yulia said. “But this house is not a home.”

WHILE MANY OF UKRAINE’S refugees settled in Warsaw, others spread throughout the country. Away from the cloudy capital, in the northern port city of Gdansk, on the Baltic Sea coast, Yuliia Chebakova is raising two boys, aged 12 and 8. Chebakova works remotely and has been able to keep the same job as a marketing copywriter that she had before 2022, when she lived with her family in Kyiv.

Chebakova grew up in Horlivka, a small city in Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast, an eastern district that has endured Russian control since the country’s invasion of the larger Donbas region in 2014. Chebakova moved away from Horlivka as a child, to the south-central city of Mykolaiv, near the Black Sea, from where beach holidays to places like Odesa became a frequent part of her growing-up.

As a child, Chebakova spoke Russian at home. She spoke it to her own children until 2022. But she has since sworn off using Russian entirely, raising her family to speak Ukrainian. Her move to Gdansk, with its seaside location, allows her and her boys to enjoy the beach in good weather.

“It’s good for [my] kids,” she said, referring to Gdansk’s Baltic coast and their therapeutic beach time. “It’s cold, but they still love it.”

The choice to live in Gdansk gives her respite from the stress of war—and doubles as a bittersweet reminder of her life in Ukraine, from childhood in Mykolaiv to a busy professional routine in Kyiv.

“Physically, I live in Poland. But mentally, I still live very much in Ukraine. So, I kind of left, and stayed, at the same time,” she said.

Chebakova says she is “cautious” about any discussions or news on a possible peace. She emphasized her desire for a deal that is viable and unlikely to allow for further conflict down the road.

“As much as I want peace in Ukraine, I’m afraid that a ‘weak peace’ would make Russia very happy.” She expressed concern that a flimsy peace arrangement would only embolden Russia to return some years later—and conquer Ukraine for good.

“What I really hope is that our partners, and especially the U.S., will create conditions to have this peace on a strong basis,” she added.