It was 4:40 a.m. when bombs began falling on the city of Kharkiv, the hometown of Liliya Dvornitchenko, in Ukraine, just one hour from the Russian border.

Her tone is measured and realistic as she describes the terrifying first moments two years ago when Russia launched a wide-scale invasion of her country, saying: "Everyone thought it would end tomorrow. It will end tomorrow," recalling her journey while sitting in a hotel café in Warsaw, Poland, "It got worse and worse."

With a grim laugh, she describes the effect of the psychological pressure on her body, and how she resembled a skeleton after just a few days.

Dvornitchenko helped organize a convoy of vehicles to transport her family members across the country, and she slept in an abandoned kindergarten building where they were not allowed to turn on the lights for fear of being targeted by air raids.

She was able to cross the border only by waving a flashlight to prevent other cars from blocking her way on an off-the-book road while millions of people headed to safety in Poland.

She speaks in a calm and composed voice as she recounts those terrible days. Only when she talks about her decision not to return to Ukraine does her voice tremble and she covers her face.

She said, "The patriotic thing to do is to return, isn’t it? Create jobs, take over positions, pay taxes, rebuild," "But I lost faith that it could be fixed."

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees explained that 6.5 million Ukrainians were registered as refugees worldwide as of February 2024. Around 960,000 have visas to come to Canada.

But with the deadline to take advantage of those visas ending on Sunday, many Ukrainians face difficult decisions about where their future will take them and whether they plan to return to their homeland.

Canada seems to have seen a sharp increase in the number of new Ukrainian arrivals in the past month before the deadline. As of the end of February, 248,726 Ukrainians had traveled to Canada, although it is unclear how many stayed.

By the end of March, Immigration Minister Marc Miller said the number of newcomers was expected to reach nearly 300,000.

Although the visa allowing Ukrainians to work and study in Canada is temporary, the vast majority of those who came to Canada and stayed have expressed their intention to settle permanently.

Few make this costly journey lightly; while many of the people in the Dvornitchenko family obtained the visa, they have all made different decisions about what to do next. While one niece chose to come to Canada, other family members halted their journey in Poland, while others remain in Ukraine.

As a professional single woman fluent in English, Dvornitchenko said Canada offered an attractive option because she had a good chance of eventually obtaining permanent residency. But she also supports her parents, who are unlikely to obtain Canadian citizenship.

"Can I pull them to a completely foreign country for three years, then bring them back?" she said. "I can’t.... It makes no sense at all."

She also does not feel she can return home herself.

Like many Ukrainians in Canada, she plans to continue fundraising and supporting the war effort from abroad.

With her parents’ apartment in Kharkiv destroyed, along with everything they owned in Ukraine, the idea of returning, even after the war ends, seems unlikely.

She said, "I understand I have reasons, right? But at the same time, I wish it were different. I really do."