Ukrainians at heart and by choice

Immigrants, residents, expats, and all those who refuse to abandon Ukraine

Indian diaspora and other expats in Ukraine

When full-scale Russian war on Ukraine began in 2022, a long-time Indian American friend, “Abi” (not her real name), in the United States was surprised to hear that people from India were living in Ukraine as first generation in Ukraine. She has known me since my kindergarten days and, in fact, paid for my grad school application fees in American dollars when I was a final year student in Kyiv applying to programs in U.S. universities. Maybe Abi assumed that I had been the only odd Indian studying in Ukraine¹ or maybe she thought Indian diaspora² doesn’t take root in non-western, non-commonwealth and non-Gulf countries. But once the community was brought to her attention, she also started worrying about them.

Were they stuck? Are there ways for them to get out? Did they need material help? What can Indians in America do to help?

But what Abi didn’t understand in her new awareness is why they would not want to leave a country fighting off an insane aggressor.

Abi and I were specifically talking about my personal friends: desis³ who went to Ukraine as students like me, but, unlike me, stayed in Ukraine. There were many circumstances and reasons — careers launched, businesses begun, love interests progressed to marriages and children with Ukrainian birth certificates and childhoods. But over the next two decades after my time in Ukraine, there were other categories of foreigners, Indians among them, who had arrived from almost every continent. They were people whose arrival signaled a shift in the economies of eastern Europe in the 1990s. These ‘non-student’ newcomers were from multiple work sectors — industrialists, investors, media moguls, restaurateurs, yoga teachers, spiritualists, evangelists, and, of late, even a vegan influencer (at least one that I know of). People moved around in the world in search of greener pastures, newer opportunities and better prospects, Indians among them.

It was surprising to me that Abi, a member of the Indian diaspora in the western world was not aware of the existence of a branch of the diaspora, albeit a small branch, in the eastern bloc. And so, I outlined for her the lives of a few of my friends and acquaintances — a pharmaceutical company founder and CEO; a husband choosing to live in the land of his wife; an employee of a multi-national corporation (MNC); an importer and exporter of goods; a committed contributor in the non-governmental organization (NGO) space. My point, which Abi embraced graciously: Indian men and women had built their own meaningful lives in Ukraine and were contributing members of Ukrainian society, just as Indian Americans have made the United States their home and have contributed to its well-being and prosperity.

If Russia bombed the United States today, not all in the Indian diaspora and their descendants would think immediately of “going home to India”. Some of us, as yours truly here, don’t even own houses to go to in India anymore. Some of us, yours truly included, have lost the “street cred” we need to thrive survive in India. We have careers, jobs, employers, employees, work deadlines, non-work lives, family, school-going children, adult children, students, mentees, neighbors, volunteer commitments, bills and mortgages that tie us down but also give our lives some shape as committed, giving members of this society. We worry about mundane chores like the ‘grass has to be mowed!, ‘the snow has to be shoveled!’ and ‘who will feed the dog?’ invading our sleep. It would be impossible to just “up and leave” whether we are citizens or green card holders of the United States or in the country on work visas. The same applies to the Indian diaspora and their descendants elsewhere in the world.

I have come across this more than once: Indians in India and Indians in the United States and Indians maintaining homes both in India and outside India (only a small privileged minority) assuming that Indians in Ukraine can just leave their country of domicile as if they merely gravitated to a distant place for 30 year vacations. Whether a nation has immigration policies and avenues or not, people working, paying taxes and raising children in that nation are emotionally connected to that nation and its nationality. They are physically and emotionally invested not only in their own individual lives but also the place and society that needed them, welcomed them, mutually benefited from them. The law of human rootedness does not go pfft when their nation is threatened (like Ukraine fighting Russian aggression; like the U.S. worried about Project 2025 come January 20).

Having given this general background of Indian diaspora in Ukraine, I want to make a note that the ex-pat community in Ukraine includes South Asian, Middle Eastern, African, European, pan American, Chinese and Korean diaspora in sizeable numbers. The VisitUkraine website quotes the Head of the Central Interregional Department of the State Migration Service in Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast that, as of July 2023, there were half a million foreigners with permanent or temporary residence permits in Kyiv and surrounding areas. The number is expected to be much higher, naturally, across all of Ukraine.

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I am currently working on a post about one prominent member of the Indian diaspora and someone close to my heart and mind, Dr. Mridula Ghosh. In the meanwhile, here is an introduction to one of her many work projects:

This video is part of a series from the project ‘Ukraine and South Asia: Open Dialogues” at the Eastern European Development Institute at Ukraine (EEDI-Ukraine). One other panel discussion from this series pertains to the topic of Indian diaspora in Ukraine.

1. I was the only Indian studying veterinary medicine anywhere in the former Soviet Union or at least the first Indian.

2. The dispersion or spread of a people from their original homeland.

3. A person of South Asian birth or descent living abroad.