Ukrainian widow Olga Garbuz, who lost her husband to the war in Ukraine, came to Dubai with her daughter in 2022 to rebuild her life.
But the recent escalation in the Gulf has revived the fears she thought she had left behind.
“The war in Ukraine took many things from me and my daughter. My husband got killed. We got displaced multiple times. I cannot imagine going through any of these again,” Ms Garbuz tells The Independent.
Her husband, Yuriy Volchkov, was killed in Kharkiv, a frontline city in eastern Ukraine, in March 2022, when the vehicle he was travelling in to distribute humanitarian aid was shot at by the Russians. He was 45 years old.
After fleeing Kharkiv, which fell under the Russian occupation in the early months of the war, Ms Garbuz and her daughter moved repeatedly across Ukraine before eventually leaving the country.
“We had to move 13 times from city to city,” she says. “Each time packing our things and setting up a new home was incredibly exhausting.
“I arrived in the UAE with my daughter Maya and just two suitcases four years ago. Since then, I have been working hard for the wellbeing of my daughter.”
A few days before the escalation began with Iran’s retaliatory strikes across the Gulf, she said she had finally begun to feel, after three years, that life was returning to normal.
Her biggest fear now is having to uproot her daughter again.
“Now we have been living in the same apartment for almost two years. My daughter goes to school regularly.
“It would be an absolutely heartbreaking situation for her if we had to move again,” she adds.
But the sound of missile interceptions over the Dubai skies has brought back old instincts.
“I found myself again packing an emergency bag. I knew which documents to include, that we must have water at home and cash on hand.”
The explosions also bring back the physical memory of war: “Sometimes my body tenses up because I remember what it was like and what usually followed.
“I still try to remain calm and not give in to panic.”
Despite the tension, she says she still trusts the UAE authorities: “I believe they will be able to resolve this conflict diplomatically as quickly as possible.”
This combination of satellite images provided by Planet Labs PBC show Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, left, and on Sunday, March 1, 2026, right (Planet Labs PBC)A week on from the military escalation, Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian apologised for targeting his Gulf neighbours, but Iran has continued to fire at Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia with fresh attacks.
On Friday, the UAE’s ministry of interior issued an emergency alert across Dubai urging residents to seek immediate shelter following warnings of a potential missile threat. The UAE intercepted nine ballistic missiles and 109 drones, the Ministry of Defence confirmed.
Amid the rising tension, Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha said he had received assurances from the government of the United Arab Emirates that Ukrainian citizens in the country would be protected.
Some 250,000 Ukrainians are currently living in the Middle East.
For Ukrainians like Kateryna Moskviechiev and her husband Dmytro, who relocated to the UAE for safety, being caught up in another conflict far from home in Abu Dhabi was the last thing they expected.
“It feels like the war has followed us to Dubai,” Ms Moskviechiev tells The Independent.
The couple, along with their two sons, aged eight and two, moved to the UAE in September 2024. An estimated 5.2 to 6 million Ukrainians moved abroad following the war.
“We left Ukraine because we didn’t want our children to grow up in a war zone,” she says.
Kateryna Moskviechiev and her husband Dmytro relocated to the UAE for safety (Supplied)But the sight of Russian missiles and Shahed drones flying overhead near her apartment on the Corniche, and the sound of loud explosions as air-defence systems intercepted them, left her “shocked and surprised”.
“That’s not what you expect in the UAE,” says Ms Moskviechiev.
“It brought back my worst memories of Ukraine, when our family hid in the bathroom while Russians bombed Kharkiv.
“The three of us slept on the floor of a bus stop that had thick walls and no windows.”
As the recent Iranian drone and missile attacks across the Gulf are far less intense than the bombardment Ukraine has endured, she said she is not scared.
“I’ve lived through this before,” she says. “And I’m impressed by how effectively the UAE’s air-defence systems are responding. I definitely feel safer here than in Ukraine.”
Ms Moskviechiev says she is praying this escalation will end quickly, adding: “We know what a prolonged war can do to a country and its people – this war must stop.”
Another Ukrainian in Dubai, Alexandra Govorukha, a PR professional, says she moved there six months ago after relocating to the UK from Ukraine in 2022.
“And the danger is near again. One rocket was shot down not far from our house,” Ms Govorukha wrote in a post on Facebook.
She says her nine-year-old daughter, who is studying remotely, “knows what the war is and is already hardened by life”.
“We need to learn to have a Plan B everywhere and be prepared for any situation unfolding.”
Mariana Yevsyukova, a mother of two children aged seven and one, said even relatives back home in Ukraine are worried about the attacks in the Gulf (Supplied)Mariana Yevsyukova, a UAE resident since 2017, says the escalating tensions in the Middle East have stirred painful memories for many Ukrainians living in the country.
“We carry the trauma of witnessing war,” she says. “We ran away from the Shahed drones in Ukraine, and now they are hitting the UAE.”
Mrs Yevsyukova, a mother of two children aged seven and one, said even relatives back home in Ukraine are worried about the attacks in the Gulf.
“My family in Kharkiv checks on me several times a day. A friend who is struggling without power in this harsh winter messaged me to say he is there if I need anything.
“Even in the middle of a war, they are thinking about others.”
