Ukrainian

Ukrainians in Israel who are not eligible to immigrate as Jews or their relatives number about 23,000 and live under temporary group protection from deportation. Some came years ago as caregivers, cleaners and builders; about 14,000 more, mostly women and children, fled after Russia's invasion in February 2022 to join relatives or friends in Israel's large Russian-speaking cities. Without refugee status they receive almost no state support or health insurance and depend on relatives, volunteers and aid groups, and many have slid into poverty since Israel's own war began in 2023. The war followed them: five Ukrainians, three of them children, were killed when an Iranian missile struck a Bat Yam apartment block in June 2025.

Ukrainians in Türkiye are a community of residents, workers and families centred on the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya, with a second hub in Istanbul. The first wave came in the 1990s and 2000s, many of them women who married Turkish men after meeting through tourism and trade; Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022 brought hundreds of thousands more through the country, of whom tens of thousands stayed on residence permits rather than as refugees, and Türkiye sheltered war orphans from Dnipropetrovsk region in Antalya. Their numbers have since fallen from about 47,000 permit holders in early 2023 to about 33,000 in 2025. Most are Orthodox, and since 2023 the Ecumenical Patriarchate has given them their own liturgies in Ukrainian in Istanbul and welcomed them in the Greek Orthodox churches of Antalya, Alanya and Side, where the Ukrainian consul reads the Easter Gospel in Ukrainian.

Ukrainians in the United Arab Emirates are a young, urban community of about 30,000 residents, double their number before Russia's full-scale invasion of 2022, when Ukrainian firms moved staff and families to Dubai's business free zones to keep working. Many run or staff IT, real estate, finance, beauty and hospitality businesses, and about 1,500 Ukrainian companies were already registered in Dubai before the war. Most also speak Russian, but they keep a careful distance from the far larger Russian community that shares their towers and cafes, and they gather around business councils, charity drives for Ukraine and festivals of embroidered vyshyvanka shirts. Most are Orthodox by tradition but have no parish of their own, while Greek Catholics have held a liturgy in Ukrainian at St Mary's Church in Dubai since 2014.