Dispatch Two -“Ukraine’s Lost Generation”

An on-the-ground look at how prolonged displacement is complicating post-war return and recovery for Ukraine.

Bucharest Sector IV, Romania - December 2025

Apartment blocks in Sector IV, Bucharest, now home to many Ukrainian refugees.

I spoke with Hanna, a 16-year-old also from Odesa, who has been in Romania since March 2022. She described the challenges of forced integration and her experiences with locals in Bucharest. Multiple people, she says, have told her to “go back to Ukraine.”

“There is bullying,” Hanna tells me. “Teachers say bad things. Ukrainian children are sometimes separated in class.”

Mariia also mentions cases of vandalism against Ukrainians. “Some people do very bad things,” she says. “Neighbors damage Ukrainian cars.” She declined to comment further.

I learned that some local Romanians believe Ukrainians have a better life in Romania. “They don’t understand that we also had normal lives in Ukraine,” Mariia says. Housing has also become an issue. “Sometimes one room costs twice as much just because you are Ukrainian.”

Hanna tells me about her younger sister, who attends a public elementary school. She says many Romanian teachers separate students in class, with Romanian children sitting in the front and Ukrainian students in the back. “Romanian teachers give bad grades to Ukrainian students,” she says. “This is common.”

Mariia adds that some private schools offer better environments, but the cost makes them inaccessible for many families. As a result, most Ukrainian youth continue to study in public schools across the city, navigating a system that was never designed for years of displacement.

For many Ukrainian families, exile was always imagined as temporary. Parents speak about return as an inevitability, something that will happen once conditions allow. But for their children, the calculation is different. Adolescence has unfolded elsewhere. The years that shape language, confidence, ambition, and belonging have passed outside Ukraine’s borders.

What has emerged in cities like Bucharest is not simply a refugee population waiting to go home, but a generation quietly building long-term lives. Emergency policies introduced in 2022, temporary protection, parallel schooling, short-term housing, were designed to respond to crisis. Nearly four years later, those policies form the infrastructure of everyday life. Decisions once framed as provisional- where to study, which language to learn, which qualifications to pursue- are now shaping futures that may not include return.

Ukraine’s reconstruction is often discussed in terms of infrastructure and security. Roads, bridges, power grids, and institutions will need to be rebuilt. But reconstruction also depends on people. Teachers, civil servants, planners, professionals, and young adults who will carry the country forward. Many of those people are now coming of age elsewhere.

Mariia belongs to that generation. Her education is Ukrainian. Her daily life is Romanian. Her skills, networks, and routines are being shaped outside the country that will eventually need them most.

For Hanna, the idea of return is tied to memory rather than certainty. Ukraine remains home in principle, but not necessarily in practice. “Home is home,” she says, even as she acknowledges that many people will not go back.

Others are more direct. Alena, 18, from Kherson, left Ukraine at fourteen. She arrived in Romania in April 2022. “My adolescence happened here,” she says. She has friends, a boyfriend, and plans to study music. She is learning Japanese and wants to move to Japan. Ukraine is still part of her life, but not the place where she imagines building it.

Across Bucharest, Ukrainian families live in apartment blocks that were once meant to house short-term guests. Children attend schools that were never designed for them. Community centers fill gaps left by national systems. Life continues. Time moves forward.

When the war ends, Ukraine will issue a call that will reach young people who spent their formative years in exile, who learned other languages, adapted to other systems, and built lives shaped by displacement. Some will return. Others will not.

What remains uncertain is whether Ukraine, and the policies governing displacement across Europe, are prepared for that reality. A generation raised in waiting is now growing into adulthood. Whether they see their future in Ukraine will depend not only on peace, but on whether return still feels possible, familiar, and worth the cost of leaving behind the lives they have already begun living.

Nearly four years into the war, tens of thousands of Ukrainians continue their lives outside of Ukraine. Teenagers who fled at thirteen are now applying for college; those who fled at sixteen have nearly completed bachelor’s degrees in Romanian institutions. At the start of the war, the European Union implemented temporary assistance for refugees fleeing to neighboring countries- measures such as continued education for children, community organizations, language classes, and temporary housing.

Now, after almost four years of displacement, these “temporary measures” have become permanent.

In Romania, one organization- the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS), has focused on youth education, Romanian language classes, and general integration. JRS supports Ukrainian children through a kindergarten program where they are taught Ukrainian, Romanian, and English. For older children, the organization offers music lessons as well as language classes. JRS is run by a group of Ukrainian teachers from various regions of Ukraine, all of whom escaped to Romania at different points throughout the war.

Mariia, 20, from Odesa, teaches a classroom of 25 children. She is pursuing a degree in international relations through her university in Ukraine, with classes held online. I sat down with her in Bucharest to discuss the impact of long-term displacement among young Ukrainians. When asked about her day-to-day life, she says, “Here I volunteer—I help with translations, documents, and I teach English to children.”

Her contributions stress the importance of her generation, and how Ukraine will one day call on this cohort to rebuild the country. It is not a question of if the war will end, but when it does, the eventual ceasefire will result in a mass call for return. The question now is whether they will answer.

When asked about the decision to return to Ukraine, Mariia says she does not think Ukraine will be able to reclaim everyone who grew up outside its borders. A large part of this belief is rooted in memory. Teenagers who make new friends, discover new cities, and learn new languages are inevitably drawn to the places where they associate life with friendship, laughter, and safety.

At the same time, permanent displacement has come with its own consequences.

A Ukrainian winter calendar and a donation box for refugees at JRS Romania, Bucharest.