![\"Natalia](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/UKR_ORPHANS_01.jpg\")
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Natalia Lashchevskaya, director of the Wings of Hope children\u2019s home, surrounded by children. <\/p>\n
Ukraine on the Wings of Hope <\/p>\n
Four years ago, a group of Ukrainian orphans escaped the horror of Russian attacks on their home of Mariupol to the safety of Switzerland. But as the war in Ukraine drags on with no end in sight, some are facing the question of when or whether to go back.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
This content was published on <\/p>\n
August 26, 2026 – 09:00\n<\/p>\n
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\n I cover international relations with a focus on Switzerland, lead journalistic investigations, and conduct deeply personal interviews on challenging topics.
\nOver 25 years in journalism. Graduated from Moscow State University’s Faculty of Journalism and the French Press Institute in Paris. Former TV\/radio host in France and Russia. I am a published author and documentary filmmaker who has interviewed presidents and rock stars. <\/p>\n
After four years of exile, Tara is going home. The Ukrainian orphan, only eight when Russia besieged his birthplace of Mariupol, was evacuated with his four-year-old sister Vera and almost 100 other children three days before the city was surrounded.<\/p>\n A convoy of four buses carrying the kids took eight hours to travel just 200 kilometres northwest to the relative safety of Zaporizhzhia, before onward journeys to Lviv, then Poland, and finally to what was to be temporary refuge in Switzerland.<\/p>\n It was a blessed escape. The siege of Mariupol went on for three agonising months, with upwards of 20,000 civilians killed before the city was overrun. Yet a year later, safe in ruralcanton Valais in Switzerland, Tara only wanted to know when he and his sister could go home.<\/p>\n The director of the children\u2019s home with some of the teenage boys in her care.<\/p>\n Ukraine on the Wings of Hope <\/p>\n \u201cWe have only one goal,\u201d Natalia Lashchevskaya, director of the Wings of Hope<\/a> children\u2019s home, by then operating in Switzerland, said at the time. \u201cUkraine.\u201d<\/p>\n No end of the war is in sight<\/p>\n Few expected it to take so long, with around half of the evacuees still living outside Ukraine and with no end in sight for a war that has entered its fifth year. Even those who return can\u2019t revisit the communities they once knew. Mariupol\u00a0is\u00a0still occupied by Russia and the building that once housed Wings of Hope is destroyed.<\/p>\n The kids who fled in 2022 have attended Swiss schools, learned French, made friends, grown up. At the same time, they have kept links with Ukraine, speaking their language, celebrating Ukrainian holidays and continuing parts of their home education. <\/p>\n Ukraine on the Wings of Hope <\/p>\n In a surveyExternal link<\/a> of Ukrainian refugees conducted through January this year the UNHCR international refugee agency reported that just 3% planned to return within the next 12 months, while 46% hope to go back some day. Another 23% saw no hope of return and 28% were undecided. Aspirations to return have declined steadily in each of the six surveys the UN agency has carried out, from a high of 83% in 2022, to the latest 49%.<\/p>\n Girls from the children\u2019s home during a festive performance, dressed in the colours of the Ukrainian national flag.<\/p>\n Ukraine on the Wings of Hope <\/p>\n Tara and Vera will be among those in the group that will soon make it back to their country. The siblings, currently in temporary accommodation in Germany, are expected to return to relatively peaceful Western Ukraine by the end of the year.<\/p>\n More than 40 others remain in Switzerland, while another 14 have already become adults. The kids who fled in 2022 have attended Swiss schools, learned French, made friends, grown up. At the same time, they have kept\u00a0links with Ukraine, speaking their language, celebrating Ukrainian\u00a0holidays\u00a0and continuing parts of their home education.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of them now live between\u00a0two\u00a0worlds,\u201d\u00a0Lashchevskaya\u00a0tells Swissinfo. \u201cThey are grateful to Switzerland for the safety, support and opportunities it has given them, but at heart they remain Ukrainian.\u201d<\/p>\n External Content <\/p>\n The situation is far worse for children who were unable to escape the occupation.<\/p>\n One girl who had been under Lashchevskaya\u2019s care lost her mother and grandmother in the bombardment of Mariupol. Her younger sister, just three years old in 2022, was taken to Russia and later\u00a0placed with a Russian family<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWill these sisters ever see each other again?\u201d Lashchevskaya\u00a0asks. \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n Boys and girls from the Mariupol children\u2019s home evacuated to Switzerland.<\/p>\n Ukraine on the Wings of Hope <\/p>\n This year, Switzerland formally joined an international coalition<\/a> that\u2019s working for the return of Ukrainian children who have been forcibly taken to Russia. That followed criticism of the Swiss government for only participating as an observer for two years.<\/p>\n For Lashchevskaya, what matters is whether such efforts produce tangible results.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery child who returns is not<\/a>\u00a0a statistic\u00a0or a number in a report,\u201d she says. \u201cIt is a life\u00a0saved, a connection restored with family, culture and country.\u201d<\/p>\n Children from the Mariupol children\u2019s home on a bike ride in Switzerland.<\/p>\n Ukraine on the Wings of Hope <\/p>\n From one group to many individuals<\/p>\n Even for those who did escape, returning is complicated by continuing violence, with attacks from Russian missiles and drones on homes, power plants and water supplies. But the kids understand the reality, Lashchevskaya says, even as they want to return to a Ukraine where they can study, work, have families and build futures without fear.\u00a0<\/p>\n The group of kids that arrived on four buses are finding their own way. Some have new families; others are completing education or beginning independent adult lives. They are increasingly making their own decisions about where and how they want to live.\u00a0<\/p>\n Back in 2023, there was a joke at Wings of Hope.\u00a0The children were trying to teach Gosha, their pet blue parrot, to say \u201cSlava\u00a0Ukraini!\u201d,\u00a0 Glory to Ukraine. Lashchevskaya told them that they could go home once he learned the words. Three years on, there\u2019s a second parrot to keep Gosha company but he\u2019s still\u00a0struggling with his Ukrainian.<\/p>\n \u201cGosha does say \u2018Slava\u00a0Ukraini\u2019,\u00a0but so indistinctly that\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0the only one who can hear it,\u201d Lashchevskaya insists, laughing. \u201cNow we\u2019re teaching both of them. It\u2019s\u00a0still a work in progress, but we really believe\u00a0they\u2019ll\u00a0get there.\u201d<\/p>\n Edited by Tony\u00a0Barrett\/vm<\/a>\/ts<\/a><\/p>\n \n More<\/p>\n More <\/p>\n Foreign Affairs\n <\/p>\n Swiss mobilise quiet diplomacy to help return Ukraine\u2019s stolen children <\/p>\n This content was published on <\/p>\n Aug 6, 2026 <\/p>\n Formerly just an observer, Switzerland joined the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children earlier this year. <\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/UKR_ORPHANS_06.jpg\")
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<\/p>\n![\"Children](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/UKR_ORPHANS_05.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Switzerland](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/080_HL_VNGUYEN_3182047.jpg\")
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