As the war in Ukraine enters its fourth year, around six million Ukrainians are still living abroad. Some are building new lives in their adopted nations, while others wait for a peace deal and the possibility of returning.
The Globe and Mail has been following a group of families who were among the first to leave their homeland when Russia launched its full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. Three of these made their way to Newfoundland, where they’ve rebuilt careers and fulfilled their dream of starting a family. Another young couple travelled to Glasgow and have slowly begun to recover from years of emotional turmoil.
All five left Ukraine with little more than a suitcase and the hope of returning one day. That hope has faded over the years but, as talk of a peace deal intensifies, they’re faced with the difficult decision of whether to uproot once again.
Olga Antoniuk, 31, Ivan Antoniuk, 33, and Kimberley, nine months
“I know she will be smart. I know she will be beautiful.” — Olga
Kimberley wriggled in her high chair and smiled as Olga gathered another spoonful of food.
Three years ago, Olga and her husband, Ivan, had given up on starting a family. They were living in Chernivtsi, in western Ukraine, watching their lives unravel as Russian bombs started falling. Olga couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. Her work as a real estate agent dried up and Ivan’s construction job ended. “Every day, it was worse and worse,” she recalled.
She knew they had to leave while they could. Under martial law adult men weren’t allowed out of the country, but Ivan had dual citizenship – Ukrainian and Romanian – and he’d be able to go. But that could change.
Simba was one of two cats that Olga had to get out of western Ukraine in 2022. The other, Bella, died of old age after reaching Newfoundland.
A friend in Vancouver suggested Newfoundland as an affordable option. Olga had never heard of it but she started frantically searching online for some way to get there. After e-mailing everyone she could think of, Olga finally got a response from an official in the Newfoundland government: “Are you ready to fly?” She was told that a direct flight was leaving Katowice, Poland, for St. John’s on May 9. So they packed what they could and headed there.
When they arrived at the airport in Katowice, Olga asked how to pay for the flight. No charge, she was told. Everything had been arranged by officials from Newfoundland. They’d also be given a room in a St. John’s hotel until they found their bearings, and there would be food for her family – and for her two cats. She thought there must be a catch. “Probably they want my kidneys or something like that,” she told Ivan.
Within two weeks they found jobs and rented a flat. And soon they were ready to think about children.
Kimberley was born on May 14, 2024, the first Canadian in the family. Olga knew someone at work called Kimberley and “Kim” was pronounced the same in English, Ukrainian and Romanian. “I just want her to be happy,” Olga said.
St. John's and its property market were an alien environment for Olga, whose real-estate work in Ukraine had never involved mortgages, competing bids or realtors mediating between buyers.
Ron Birmingham remembers the day he saw a television report about Olga and Ivan shortly after they arrived in Newfoundland.
He runs Keller Williams Platinum Realty in St. John’s and he was struck by Olga’s background as a realtor, as well as her proficiency in English. He tried contacting her but had no luck.
Four months later, Olga walked into his office.
She had been cleaning rooms at the Sheraton Hotel but wanted to get back into real estate. A friend put her in touch with someone at Keller Williams and she’d come to the office to find out how to become an agent.
“I recognized her,” Ron recalled. They talked for two hours. He was so impressed that he offered to pay the $4,000 fee for Olga’s licensing course and bring her on board with KW once she passed the exam. “She just seemed very solid, very driven, very strong,” he said.
Olga shows clients a home for sale in Mount Pearl. So far this year, she has sold six properties.
Olga was stunned. She quit housecleaning and took an office job so she’d have more time to study.
Everything she read about real estate in Canada was new and confusing. She couldn’t fathom bidding wars and had never dealt with mortgages. In Ukraine, home sales were almost always cash buys and agents negotiated directly with owners to push the price down. She found it bizarre that in Canada buyers competed against each other and interacted through realtors.
“How can they do this?” she wondered. “It’s like a game.”
It took three tries but she finally passed the exam in January, 2023. She joined Keller Williams three months later and closed her first sale in April – a fixer-upper that went for $130,000.
She caught on fast. By the end of 2023, she’d made $30,000 in commissions and increased that to $100,000 last year. She’s already sold six houses this year and ranks among the top third of KW’s 97 brokers.
She’s also become the go-to realtor for Ukrainian refugees looking for a home in the province. “I’m the only Ukrainian real estate agent in Newfoundland,” she said. “I understand pretty good what Ukrainians need, because I needed the same.”
After she closed her first sale Olga offered to pay Ron back the $4,000. “No,” he replied. “We’re good.”
Kimberley is a Canadian citizen, but Olga is applying to make her an official Ukrainian too.
Olga follows the news about a possible end to the war, but she doubts she’ll go back to Ukraine for good. She’ll make regular visits to see family and she plans to apply for Ukrainian citizenship for Kimberley.
Ukraine will always be in their hearts, but they’re building a new life now, on The Rock. Olga’s real estate business is thriving and Ivan owns a shop where he fixes up old cars and resells them online.
“I love Newfoundland,” Olga said. “I will remember for the rest of my life as well, that people here helped me a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. And everything that I have right now I have because of them.”
Mahmoud Atris, 28
“The brain is what holds our identities. Without it, who are we?” — Mahmoud
The note board in his room has a reminder of his goal to be a surgeon, sitting under a passage from the Quran.
The writing on the yellow sticky note is barely visible, but Mahmoud still reads it every day for inspiration.
There are eight multicoloured, neatly drawn arrows all pointing to one word: surgeon.
The note is stuck on the wall above his desk in a room he rents in Mount Pearl, a suburb of St. John’s. It’s a reminder of the dream he’s had since childhood and the goal he continues to hold since arriving in Canada.
He came to Newfoundland nearly three years ago from Bucha, outside Kyiv, shortly after Russian troops stormed into the city.
He’d just finished six years of studying at Bogomolets National Medical University in the Ukrainian capital and was about to start a residency program with a surgeon. Instead, he was holed up in his 19th floor apartment watching Russian helicopters circle outside.
The Ukrainian army eventually pushed the Russians out of Bucha and Mahmoud fled to Hungary and then the Netherlands. Martial law stopped most men from leaving the country, but Mahmoud was lucky: He’d come to Ukraine years ago from Qatar, and because he was a permanent resident and not a citizen, he was eligible to leave.
But his hopes of becoming a neurosurgeon had been crushed.
He’d wanted to study the workings of the brain ever since he was a boy and watched his grandfather die from a neurological disorder that no one could treat.
“There were no answers,” he recalled. “I want to be the person that is able to give answers and hope when there is none.”
He went to Ukraine in 2014 as a teenager, looking for adventure and a chance to study medicine. Ukrainian universities were known for high-quality education and low tuition, making them a draw for students from the Middle East and Africa.
But eight years later, as he sat in a refugee camp in the Netherlands, he was down to his last $500 and running out of options. Then he saw a news item on television about a Ukrainian sponsorship program in Canada.
His heart leapt. His English was decent and maybe he could apply to a Canadian medical school.
After searching online, he saw a Facebook post about the Newfoundland initiative offering Ukrainians a free flight to St. John’s from Katowice on May 9, 2022.
“All right,” he said to himself. “What’s Newfoundland?”
Mahmoud makes nighttime rounds at a seniors residence in Mount Pearl, a job that took him a step closer to his medical goals.
On the morning of the flight he couldn’t contain his excitement. He’d been packed for hours and was the first one on the hotel bus to the airport.
But within days of landing in St. John’s, a harsh reality set in. Qualifying as a doctor in Canada was more complicated than he’d imagined.
He had to apply for a residency program, and only a handful of foreigners were accepted. He also had to be a permanent resident, which could take two years or more.
He thought about returning to Kyiv but ultimately decided to stay. “I might as well try and see how it goes,” he thought.
So he rented a room in Mount Pearl for $600 a month and found a job at a seniors home working 12-hour night shifts. He earned a little more than minimum wage but the position qualified under a program that put him on a pathway to permanent residency, which he obtained after 18 months.
Then he started the long process of applying for the residency program.
He aced the English proficiency test and passed two medical exams.
To get further experience in his field, he applied for an observer program in Toronto and spent a month following surgeons at Sunnybrook Hospital and The Hospital for Sick Children, all at his own expense. He bought a $1,500 surgery simulator and spent hours at home honing his dexterity and operating on plastic organs, using two long rods that mimicked laparoscopic surgery.
Last fall, he finally had everything in place to submit an application for the one neurosurgery residency spot open to foreigners at the University of Toronto. He’s up against around 200 other applicants and he’ll find out if he’s accepted on March 4.
Just above the small sticky note on the wall in his room he’s also taped some inspirational verses from the Quran. “When things get difficult, I look at them and remind myself: just don’t worry.”
This device helps Mahmoud hone his surgical skills, but he still has far to go before he can operate for real.
Mahmoud wasn’t sure he’d find friendship or community in St. John’s – as a Muslim, a Ukrainian, a Qatari and a refugee. But it proved surprisingly easy.
He’s been to the city’s lone mosque and found fellowship during Eid al-Fitr with dozens of Muslims who gathered at a local sports complex to celebrate. He’s volunteered as a translator for newcomers from Ukraine and formed a support group for Ukrainian doctors, nurses and therapists who are also trying to have their qualifications recognized.
He’s realistic about his chances for the U of T residency and he has a plan B. If he doesn’t get in, he’ll enroll in a masters program in medicine at Memorial University, and apply again.
When he finally makes it and performs his first operation, he wants it to be in Newfoundland. “It would be my pleasure and honour to serve these people,” he said. “I consider myself one of them right now. I’m a Newfie.”
Oliver Hawes, 29 and Sonya Hawes, 28
“We finally got to the point where, okay, we’re a little bit stable now. Now what we can do with our lives?” — Sonya
Dec. 8, 2024, in Glasgow, Scotland:
Oliver’s stomach is in knots. He’s sitting in the corner in an ornate room he’s rented at the University of Glasgow, waiting for the start of his first fashion show in years.
Even though he only has three outfits to display, and a couple of dozen friends and his father in the audience, he’s desperate to get everything right.
He’d spent months working late into the night sewing designs on a jacket, hoodie and pants he’d bought from a vintage clothing shop. He made a couple of stylized T-shirts and a kilt-like skirt out of old shirts from his closet.
Now, as he set the mood with a selection of music on his phone, the three models – two friends and his sister-in-law, Stella – prepared to strut along a makeshift runway between two rows of chairs.
His wife, Sonya, stood next to them, making last-minute adjustments to the clothes. She was wearing her white Stella McCartney running shoes for luck, the same shoes she wore on their wedding day nearly three years ago in Kyiv – two days before Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Oliver, who held his first fashion show in Glasgow this past December, grew up in the United States and draws inspiration from skater culture. By day, he works at a skateboard shop in the Scottish city.
When Sonya married Oliver in these Stella McCartney shoes, Ukraine was just days away from the Russian invasion that forced them both to flee.
It was Oliver’s interest in fashion that first brought the couple together in Ukraine.
He grew up in the United States, a carefree kid immersed in the street culture of skateboarding. In high school he created designs for the grip tape that kids put on top of their boards, and after graduating he took fashion classes at a community college. Then he headed to the Netherlands to pursue his dream of designing clothes.
He made a few side trips to Kyiv where his mother taught English. One of her students was Sonya.
They met just before the COVID-19 pandemic and Oliver spent lockdown in Kyiv. They soon fell in love and made plans to get married on Feb. 22, 2022.
Two days after saying their vows they were dodging Russian missiles and racing out of the city. They travelled to Poland, the Netherlands and Britain, looking for somewhere to call home.
They spent weeks getting Sonya’s sick mother out of Ukraine to London, and were at her side as she died in a hospice. They cared for Sonya’s only sister, 18-year-old Stella, who had come to the U.K. with their mother and wrestled with loneliness.
They all struggled with so much darkness that, at times, Sonya stopped feeling almost anything.
“It’s kind of like if you’re in a ship and you’re sailing somewhere. You have a map saying, here’s where I’m going. But if you’re in a storm, you might not be able to see some of the yards ahead of you.”
Sonya's sister, Stella, models one of Oliver's shirts, which shows St Andrew's, a historic Orthodox church in Kyiv.
The couple has been in Glasgow for a year and have finally found some stability. They’ve learned some tough lessons, too: nothing is permanent and rely only on each other.
“We try not to have a lot of stuff, because you don’t know when you will move out of this apartment, you don’t know when you will go to another country,” said Sonya.
They’ve both found jobs – Oliver works in a skateboard store and Sonya serves tables at a coffee shop called Caffettino – but they have bigger ambitions.
Oliver spends nearly all his free time designing clothes. He calls his collection The Third Culture Club, a play on his experience as an immigrant who has blended two cultures – the U.S. and Ukraine – to create something new.
Sonya is determined to open her own restaurant and she’s already impressed the owners of Caffettino. They plan to put her in charge of a second location when it opens in a few months.
Despite that support, the couple is still wrestling with the culture of Glasgow and fending off negativity.
“In Glasgow, there are a lot of people who are not happy with their lives and the position they are in, and some of them will tell you that and they will try to put you down,” she said. “And when I’m with Oliver I’m saying to him, ‘If you have this idea we can make it happen.’”
Sonya is still processing the traumas of war, but is determined to move forward. Currently the de facto manager of Caffettino, she is on track to run a second location that the owners are setting up.
Sonya still suffers from the trauma of the war.
“I really analyze myself a lot, and I understand the pain is still there and it’s caused issues with some things that are going on in my life,” she said.
She’s still struggling with the death of her mother and the separation from family in Ukraine. She wonders sometimes about having a child, and thinks about the baby she lost a few months before the wedding.
Sonya studied psychology in Kyiv and knows that she has a lot to process – about the war, the dislocation and what lies ahead.
She’s determined to go to Ukraine this year, to visit her father and grandmother. She feels guilty that she can’t get them out and that the world doesn’t seem to care about Ukraine as much anymore.
But Glasgow is now home for her and Oliver, and they know they can overcome almost anything.
“We have a feeling of the power that we have together,” she said. “We really encourage each other, and we have our own strength.”
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