War narrows the divides between east and west in Ukraine

Vakhrushev’s brief conversations often included the same exchange.

“Hello, everything okay?” he would ask.

“All’s fine,” his employee would answer.

“Did you hear that?” he’d ask. “Where was it?”

“Then let’s go,” he’d say. “And God willing, everything will be fine.”

The front line was roughly 20 miles from the factory where his Temp Ukraine manufactured building and paving materials, and Russian-launched missiles and bombs sometimes landed close enough to shatter glass. Even as they did, Vakhrushev and his team kept going. But their work quickly changed: Piece by piece, they loaded the firm’s equipment and production onto trucks for shipment to the safety of Ilnytsya, a town 800 miles away near the Hungarian and Romanian borders.

With Moscow continuing to wage scorched-earth campaigns in the east and south, Ukrainians have abandoned their homes in droves. According to the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration, more than 6 million people are now displaced within Ukraine, in addition to the nearly 5 million who have fled the country entirely.

Along with them have gone businesses and workplaces. Many, like Vakhrushev’s company and more than a dozen of its employees, have headed to areas in western Ukraine where fighting and missile attacks have been minimal. Their journey represents a massive and very fluid demographic shift taking place within the country — one that is altering it economically and possibly changing Ukrainians’ own perception of one another.

East and west are growing closer, Vakhrushev believes. “We teach them, and they teach us,” he explained.

In Transcarpathia, the agricultural region where Ilnytsya is located, Gov. Viktor Mykyta estimates that the population of 1 million has increased by at least a third. The sudden influx of people has strained local infrastructure. Many of the displaced are being housed in school buildings, and officials are scrambling to find them new accommodations before classes resume in the fall. Still, Mykyta stresses, everyone is being taken care of. “Transcarpathians are very hospitable people,” he said.

The upheaval has also meant other changes, which may be much more lasting. More than 350 companies have relocated to Transcarpathia, bringing with them new knowledge, new business know-how and…