Yulia and her daughter Arisa, who live in Kanagawa Prefecture. Yulia was married in Ukraine, but her husband left when Arisa was two years old and his whereabouts remain unknown. Four years since Russia’s invasion arriving in Japan after a 6,600 km escape in just two weeks Her 9-year-old daughter mistook the sound of Japanese fireworks for bombs: “Mom, it’s a bombing!” “I will never speak to Russians in Japan. I know the atrocities they committed in my homeland.” These are the words of Yulia (30), who fled Ukraine and now lives in Kanagawa Prefecture with her daughter Arisa (9). It has been four years since Russia invaded Ukraine, as of February 2026. Yulia, a single mother, arrived in Japan in May 2022, three months after the war began. “At the start of the war, we were living in Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine. Suddenly, missiles struck, and the people in the city panicked. I took Arisa and evacuated by car toward western Ukraine. In Bucha, in the northwest, we saw the scars of inhumane acts committed by the Russian army, including massacres. We traveled through neighboring countries—Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia—but we couldn’t find a country that met our needs for support and living conditions. It was an escape journey of 6,600 kilometers in just two weeks.” With little money left and growing anxiety, Yulia heard from a Ukrainian acquaintance living in Fukuoka that the Japanese government was chartering flights for refugees. The program provided visas and even offered financial support in Japan without requiring a guarantor. She returned to Poland to board the chartered flight. “I knew almost nothing about Japan. I had only seen TV programs introducing Japanese culture and food and thought it looked like a beautiful country. Still, the reason I came to Japan was to live far from the war zone and Russia.” Upon arriving in Japan, Yulia stayed in a hotel in Chiba Prefecture until housing was arranged. “One time, there was a fireworks festival nearby. When my daughter heard the fireworks, she panicked. ‘Mom, it’s a bombing! Let’s run away!!’ The fear of war had left deep scars in her heart.”