By: Anna Wang

At Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the world witnessed a massive exodus of refugees from the country. Photos of exhausted, fearful women, clutching children, waiting to cross to safety, have spread across newspapers around the world.

Olga Griniк and her two young children, evacuated from their home in Avdiivka to a safer place in Ukraine, while her husband joined the armed forces.

Olga can’t look to the past — she recently learned that her family house in Avdiivka was destroyed in fighting. Others who still have a place to return to face an uneasy choice between safety and home. Many choose the latter, setting themselves up for repeated displacement.

Such is the story of Svitlana, a single mother whose husband was killed by shelling in 2014, when Russian-backed separatists took control of parts of the Donbas region.

When in the summer of 2022 the shelling once again got dangerously close to her apartment, she and her 11-year-old son named Danil, fled from the eastern Ukrainian town of Sloviansk. Upon arriving in the nearest big city, they faced the prospect of homelessness, as the shelter could only take them in only for a few nights. Eventually, they had to go back home. Soon, however, the fighting in Sloviansk began again, and they had to flee for their lives once more.

They were caught up in a cycle of repeated displacement and return — a typical situation for many in Ukraine.