(13 Mar 2022) The war in Ukraine has forced more than 2.5 million people to flee and seek refuge in other countries, but despite Russian troops pressing on with their offensive and with the fighting now in its third week some have decided to return home.
Klara Uliganich, a Ukrainian pensioner, arrived in Hungary with the very first wave of refugees.
After spending almost three weeks on the Hungarian side of the border, she said she had decided to go back to her home in Uzhhorod, a western Ukrainian city some distance from the heavy fighting.
"I got a feeling, it's hard to put it into words," she said of her decision while waiting at the railway station in the Hungarian border town of Zahony.
"I was born there, that's my home."
Her family, all refugees in Hungary, didn't want her to return, but she said she was determined to go back.
"They have not even been able to break into Kyiv yet, and that's far away," she said before boarding a train together with around 40 others heading to Ukraine.
"I can't live my life shaking in fear just because the Russians are coming. If they come, I'll be a refugee again, that's it."
Hungary, a country of around 10 million inhabitants, had taken in around 235,000 refugees from Ukraine by Saturday, the second-highest number of any other country after Poland which has received more than 1.5 million.
Hungary's government, a harsh critic of immigration which has refused to accept refugees fleeing conflict in places like Iraq and Syria, declared that it would extend assistance to all Ukrainian citizens and third-country nationals who could prove they were legal residents of Ukraine before the war began.
According to the Hungarian authorities around 10,000 people arrived from Ukraine since Friday.

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