Kraschuk is a railway worker from Kupiansk, a town in the north-east of Kharkiv region that was captured by Russia in the first days of the invasion. When Ukrainian troops liberated the town seven months later and it came under Russian fire, she fled to the Czech Republic with her four-year-old son. Although she was given free accommodation there, she did not feel welcome and returned to Kupiansk.
“Despite everything, home is home,” she said.
But in August 2023, her apartment block was shelled and she was evacuated to Kharkiv. She and her son now live in a student dormitory that has been converted into a camp for internally displaced people. The government has promised her that she will live there free of charge until the end of the war.
Kraschuk’s reasoning is both pragmatic and emotional. From Kharkiv, she can control her real estate in Kupiansk. She turned down an offer to move to Poltava, further away from the front, because she would only be guaranteed rent-free accommodation for six months there.
“Then you’re on your own,” she says. “I used to be confident. I had my own apartment, my child went to kindergarten, I had a job, I knew what would happen tomorrow. Now I don’t know anymore. I can’t go to work because I have to look after a small child. And so we live as internally displaced people.”
According to UNHCR, more than 85,000 internally displaced people like Kraschuk are still living in detention centers originally set up as an emergency measure, and new waves of refugees are looming as the government calls for mandatory evacuations from frontline areas.
