Beyond refuge: how Lviv is adapting to Ukraine’s new reality of displacement

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, thousands of Ukrainians fled east and south for Lviv. Many expected to stay for a few weeks or months before returning home.

Lviv offered relative safety. It was far from the front lines and close to the Polish border, making it possible to continue west if necessary.

Four years later, many are still there.

Children who arrived from Kharkiv, Kherson, Donetsk and other heavily affected regions now attend Lviv schools. Their parents have found jobs, rented apartments and opened businesses. Some have bought homes.

According to the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM) Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM), more than 200,000 internally displaced Ukrainians were living in the Lviv region in 2025, making it one of Ukraine’s largest centres of displacement. The movement of people on this scale represents a major demographic shift in Ukraine’s recent history and is changing where people live, work and study.

Many newcomers came from eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russian was commonly spoken at home.

Lviv’s history sets it apart from much of eastern and southern Ukraine. The city was never part of the Russian Empire. Russian forces occupied it briefly during the First World War, but Lviv spent much of the period before the Second World War under Habsburg and then Polish rule. In 1939, the Soviet Union annexed the city as part of its occupation of eastern Poland.

Ukrainian has long been central to public life in Lviv, and the city remains one of the country’s strongest centres of Ukrainian language and culture.

The arrival of so many people has brought these different histories into the same classrooms, workplaces and neighbourhoods. However, sharing the same city does not necessarily mean feeling at home.

For children, adapting to Lviv is not necessarily about hostility or exclusion. Often, the difficulty is more basic: how to start again.

Daniil Mediakovskyi, a public-school psychologist working with internally displaced children, said he has not seen widespread hostility toward displaced children. Instead, he believes the biggest barriers to integration are internal: trauma, uncertainty, and the struggle to feel that they belong.

Some children speak Russian at home but use Ukrainian at school, adding another challenge to an already difficult transition. But for Mediakovskyi, the deeper issue is fear.

He sees it even among children as young as six or seven, whose sense of safety has been disrupted by displacement, separation from family members, and the destruction of their homes and communities.

“The war took it from them,” he said.

Moving to Lviv does not necessarily make children feel at home. Some still see their real home as somewhere else: “I live here, but my home is there.”

That uncertainty can make children hesitant to form new attachments. Why build a close friendship if that friend might move away? Why make Lviv home if the family might have to leave again? “Should I really integrate?” becomes an unspoken question. Mediakovskyi worries that repeated separation and instability can make some children hesitant to become deeply attached to people or places. Of course, this will have long-term impacts on integration.

Schools and youth programmes have become part of the effort to rebuild those connections. Initiatives such as camps run by the Ukraine Leadership Academy bring displaced children and children from military families together through games, educational activities and community events.

Yura Manylov, who works with children affected by displacement at the Ukraine Leadership Academy, described the experience as living between two worlds.

“You are going to outer space, but there is a small connection pipe connecting you to your previous life.”

For Mediakovskyi, schools have an important role in helping children establish new connections. They need to create what he described as “an atmosphere that is welcoming”, particularly for children who do not yet have friends or a strong sense of safety.

Community also matters outside school.

Displaced families sometimes organize meetings for people from particular cities or regions. These gatherings give people a chance to speak with others who understand what they have experienced.

But Mediakovskyi believes those communities also need to remain open to local residents. Networks built around shared displacement can provide familiarity, but long-term integration requires relationships beyond them.

That balance, preserving connections to where people came from while building relationships where they now live, is becoming a central challenge for Lviv.

Children are not the only ones trying to rebuild their lives.

Stanislav Fedorchuk, a Ukrainian activist and military member, was forced to leave Donetsk Oblast after Russia’s invasion. Friends and colleagues helped him find temporary accommodation in Lviv.

Later, his wider family relocated there as well, including his parents, former wife and two daughters.

Their temporary home was the Kateryna motel on the outskirts of Lviv, arranged through a longtime friend and volunteer.

“Finding ourselves on the ring road and desperately trying to fight for the future was a very unexpected experience,” Fedorchuk recalled.

The motel was temporary. So was Lviv, at least initially.

But temporary arrangements can become permanent when there is nowhere to return to.

That has created new pressures for the city, particularly around housing. Demand has risen while supply remains limited. Lviv’s new-build housing market has become one of the most expensive in Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian news outlet Novyny.LIVE, prices in Lviv have sometimes exceeded those in Kyiv.

For displaced families, moving from temporary accommodation into a long-term home can be difficult. Some initially stayed with relatives or volunteers before moving into rented apartments. Others have tried to buy homes despite rising prices.

Government programmes provide financial and housing assistance to internally displaced people, while local authorities have helped with temporary accommodation and access to services. However, support does not always match the cost of living.

Manylov said government allowances intended to help IDPs are often insufficient to cover accommodation.

The pressure is not limited to displaced people. Lviv residents also face increased competition for housing and greater demand on schools, infrastructure and municipal services.

In 2022, the immediate question was where people could sleep. Four years later, the question is what happens when they stay.

Language is part of that adjustment, but it is also a reminder of how much Ukraine has changed since 2022.

For many Ukrainians, language is closely tied to family history and regional identity. Some displaced children grew up speaking Russian at home and now attend schools where Ukrainian is used for instruction and socializing.

The tensions surrounding language also predate the full-scale invasion. A Council of Europe study based on research conducted in 2021 found negative attitudes towards both Russian and Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians. It found that 23 per cent of respondents had heard hate speech directed at Russian-speaking residents in the previous year, while 17 per cent had heard similar sentiments directed at Ukrainian speakers by Russian-speaking individuals.

The war has since changed the context in which those identities are understood. Russian-speaking Ukrainians have fought in the Ukrainian military, volunteered and defended their communities. Cities Russia claimed it was “liberating” have become symbols of Ukrainian resistance.

In Lviv, these different experiences now share the same schools, streets and apartment buildings.

The question is no longer simply whether Ukrainians from different regions can live alongside one another. It is whether they can build a shared sense of belonging without having to give up the identities and connections they brought with them.

The city has shown that it can take people in during an emergency. The harder task is helping people feel that they belong once the emergency becomes their everyday life.

For some displaced Ukrainians, that process is already well underway. They have jobs, homes and businesses. Their children have spent most of their school years in Lviv.

For others, particularly children, the distance between where they live and where they consider home remains.

When Ukraine’s reconstruction is discussed, the focus is often on what can be seen: destroyed homes, damaged roads, energy infrastructure and public buildings.

But some consequences of the war are harder to measure.

They are in classrooms where children are trying to make new friends. They are in families still calling friends in cities they left years ago. They are in children who sleep safely in Lviv but still believe their real home is somewhere else.

The challenge for Lviv is no longer simply absorbing people who arrived in an emergency. It is creating a city where those who stayed can build relationships, raise children and feel that they belong.

Lviv was once a place where people waited to go home.

For many Ukrainians, it has become the place where they are trying to decide what home means now.

Alison Jones is a writer and humanitarian worker based in Ukraine. She holds a master's degree in Conflict Resolution from Georgetown University and has worked with humanitarian organizations in Ukraine and abroad. Her writing explores conflict, displacement, and the ways war reshapes everyday life.