Europe | The tide turns

As Russia’s invasion stalls, Ukraine’s refugees return home

More Ukrainians are leaving Poland than entering

A woman and her children, one of the thousands of women and children who fled the Ukraine after Russia invaded, is helped by a family member with her luggage upon her arrival from Poland, at Kyiv's railway station on May 12, 2022. - For the first time since the start of the war, the flow was reversed on May 10 with 29,000 departures for 34,000 returns according to official figures from border guards, even if the balance remains largely negative overall with 5.9 million departures for 1.56 million back. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. (Photo by Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP) (Photo by SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images)
|WARSAW

Valeria, a fashion consultant, and her mother, a housewife, escaped to Poland in early March, a week after Russian missiles began falling on Kyiv, their home town. Three months later they are returning. “It’s hard to live a normal life when all you think of is your country,” Valeria says, standing alongside a bundle of bags, and hundreds of other Ukrainians, at a train station in Warsaw, the Polish capital.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “The tide turns”

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