No ordinary grief: The plight of lawyers leaving Ukraine

There is no sense of ordinary grief facing Ukrainians this independence day: leaving your life and watching your homeland be subject to violence is far from ordinary. Yet it is estimated that 6.6 million people have left Ukraine since the war began in February 2022.

Three years ago in Odessa, Ukraine, the only physical sign of any discontent towards Russia was a “Free Sentsov” banner hanging across a building in the City Garden, referencing Oleg Sentsov, the Ukrainian filmmaker who at that time was detained by Russia over alleged terrorism charges. Separatist conflicts had been emerging in the eastern district of Ukraine, Donbas, for some time, albeit largely ignored by the West, but no one imagined that a full scale war would emerge in Ukraine.

Not least Odessa-born lawyer Dmytro Buglov, who was on holiday with his wife in Austria when he heard the news that Russia had started a full-blown military operation in Ukraine. His children were staying with their grandparents back in Odessa, and he was faced with the decision as to whether he return to Ukraine – where he may not be able to leave – or have his children meet him at the border and flee for their lives. He now makes up one of our planet’s 21.3 million refugees according to the UNHCR’s mandate as of 16 June 2022.

“The thing is, Odessa is of great importance to Russia; the whole south coast is,” Buglov muses. Even if his home was not in direct danger at the exact moment he chose to leave, there were no guarantees as to how long safety would last. He drove for 18 hours from Poland to the Ukrainian border with Moldova to collect his children who were rushed there to meet him, and that was the last time he saw his homeland. He never got a chance to say goodbye; not to his friends, his family, his home, or his country. “Not even my clients!”

Buglov estimates he knows of 200 Ukrainian lawyers in the UK, with varying levels of English. Each have left family, friends, and familiarity behind, as well as their longstanding careers as lawyers. He spent a number of years working as an investigator of law enforcement agencies (read: looking into corruption in police forces), and gained his advocate’s licence in 2017, which qualified him to undertake a wider breadth of work and to develop his own personal practice. But here, he feels that he qualifies as a refugee and not much else. Despite the frustration this brings, Buglov talks with an air of positivity. He feels luckier than most – he didn’t witness any violence himself, and his wife and children are with him.

Nataliia Savonik is another Ukrainian lawyer who has fled to the UK. She likes her coffee black, has a 10-year-old daughter and is from a small town to the west of Kyiv called Rivne. She also faced the struggle of deciding whether to stay in Ukraine, and it was only after her daughter went cold from shock over the constant fear of bombs and the blaring sound of air raid sirens, she decided she needed to take her somewhere safe. There is a constant conflict between the fact that moving to the UK brings opportunities such as safety, shelter and security, but it also takes others away; not least, career.

For many, the opportunity to practice law is gone – their English is nowhere near strong enough, their client base is gone, they lack the funds to pay for accredited courses, and an urgent need for cash to support their families means they are looking for immediate jobs. Oil giant Shell is already looking to deal with this issue – offering an online language course covering legal and business English, and developing an online network to allow job opportunities to be shared for Ukrainians in the UK.

But even with these opportunities, for Buglov, Savonik and other refugees, the concept of one day moving back to their homeland is wrought with hard questions. What will be left there after the war? Is it right to uproot their children again and move home, if they are settled here by the time things begin to look ‘normal’ again? What will Ukraine look like? When will schools reopen? Will their house still be standing?

Then there are the people who have not been able to leave Ukraine, for various reasons. “My parents are old, and are not keen to travel. They also don’t think there are opportunities for them to start over in another country – their whole life and spirit has been in Ukraine.” Buglov explains.

Law firms have been trying to deal with the difficulties that face their people who have stayed in Ukraine. Men have to remain unless they meet one of the exemptions, such as being a father of more than three young children. For this reason, Dr Oleksiy Feliv, managing partner of Integrites, was able to get to Berlin with his wife and four children upon the outbreak of the war. He understood that many of his employees could not leave, and as a result many of their families did not want to leave on their own.

So, at the beginning of the war, Feliv arranged accommodation in western Ukraine where the firm had been due to have its corporate retreat. It was considered safer than Kyiv and meant that families could stay together and employees could continue their work – albeit heavily reduced. Feliv’s focus is to ensure that it is not just the lawyers who have fled Ukraine who are supported, but the ones who remain at home too. A third of his top-earning employees – including himself – have taken pay cuts so that they could keep every single member of staff employed. They are proud of the fact that, despite a dramatic decrease in incoming work due to the war, they have made no redundancies.

International companies providing secondments to a number of Ukrainian law firms have been a real lifeline, and help keep the Ukrainian economy afloat as much as possible. Firms and companies supporting Ukrainians with this kind of work include Allen & Overy, Booking.com, Simmons & Simmons and Squire Patton Boggs. Virtual and physical secondments for lawyers have taken the pressure off of Ukrainian law firms at a time when work is at an all-time low, while still ensuring that Ukrainians can bring in money for their families and the economy. Physical secondments are not just taking place in the UK, but across Europe in locations like Germany, Slovakia, France, Finland and Austria.

There is an air of positivity when talking to Ukrainian lawyers still in Kyiv, and this year’s independence day is a reminder of everything they are fighting for. Air raid sirens are still common, and anxieties are high over potential Russian attacks this week. Offices will be closed and Ukraine’s independence day will not be celebrated in the way it has been before.

But despite all of this there is a deep gratitude among those in Ukraine: gratitude that they are still standing thus far, gratitude to the individuals and activists internationally who are keeping Ukraine in people’s minds, and most of all gratitude to their fellow Ukrainians who are supporting and fighting for their homeland and continue to see hope where others see loss.