While the Russian invasion has displaced more than a million people from Ukraine, a smaller group of Ukrainians is moving in the opposite direction, despite the intensification of Russian bombing of Ukrainian cities.
And " Fortune " magazine reported that about 80,000 Ukrainians left their jobs in various European countries and returned to their country in order to participate in the fight against the Russians.
Among them are construction workers, warehouse workers and truck drivers, most of whom work in countries neighboring Ukraine and have settled there with their families in recent years.
The Ukrainian Border Guard Service said this week that nearly 80,000 Ukrainians have returned to the country since the start of the Russian offensive on the 24th of last month.
She added that the returnees joined the army or the Popular Defense Forces, as the country's cities face a barrage of Russian bombing.
The magazine quotes a man named Sergei Longa, 51, who worked for three years in a warehouse outside Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, as saying that he returned to his home in western Ukraine near the border with Romania.
He added that his manager at work allowed him to leave and promised him to get his job back, no matter how long he was away.
While many employers express sympathy for the desire of Ukrainian men of fighting age to return, their absence may leave a chasm in Eastern European countries where they make up a large part of the workforce, particularly in industries such as transportation and construction.
In Poland, Eastern Europe's largest economy, more than a million Ukrainians have settled in the country over the past eight years since Russia's seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.
Ukrainians have replaced many Poles who chose to leave their country and go to work in Western Europe after their country joined the European Union in 2004.
The Association of Truck Drivers in Poland estimates that about a third of its drivers are from Ukraine.
The head of the Federation of Transport and Logistics Masj Ryunsky asserts that between 25 and 30 percent of Ukrainian drivers working in Polish transport companies have requested leave in order to return to combat.
The Polish Property Developers Association estimated that 20 to 30 percent of Ukrainian workers have left construction sites since the invasion began.
And local media reported that there are buses leaving Polish cities full of young Ukrainians returning to their country, loaded with medicine, food and clothes.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, announced Thursday that one million Ukrainian refugees have fled their country since Russian forces began invading it a week ago.
More than half of those who fled Ukraine passed through Ukraine westward toward Poland, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
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