UK must drop barriers for refugees, says Ukrainian ambassador to the UK
The UK should drop all barriers for Ukrainian refugees trying to enter the country, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK has said.
Vadym Prystaiko told MPs on the Home Affairs Committee today that “we will be happy if all the barriers are dropped for some period of time when we can get maximum [numbers] of people, then we will deal with that”.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates more than 2m people have already left Ukraine just two weeks after Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of his neighbour, while the Ukrainian government puts the figure closer to 7m.
The EU has temporarily waived all visa requirements for those fleeing Ukraine and it has been estimated that Poland has taken in 1.2m Ukrainians, Hungary has taken in 190,000 and Germany has taken in 30,000.
The UK government has been widely criticised for its response to the budding refugee crisis, with transport secretary Grant Shapps announcing today that 760 visas have been handed out to Ukrainian refugees.
When asked if the UK should waive visa requirements for the millions of refugees fleeing war, Prystaiko said: “I understand how sensitive it is for your society, especially after the immigration crisis, refugee crisis with Syrians, which we believe was manufactured by Russia pushing out these people from Syria, flooding with immigration, wave after wave, to Europe.
“That would definitely resolve all the issues, but how reasonable, how justified it is with your own system, that’s frankly for you to decide.
“We will be happy if all the barriers are dropped for some period of time when we can get maximum (numbers) of people, then we will deal with that.”
The government’s handling of Ukrainian refugees was plunged further into farce yesterday as it was announced the UK will set up a “pop up” refugee centre in the French city of Lille, which is 70 miles away from Calais where thousands of Ukrainians are trying to enter the UK.
Home secretary Priti Patel on Monday said a centre to process refugees was being set up in Calais, however Ukrainians on arrival were instead directed to hand in forms more than 100 miles away in either Paris or Brussels.
Foreign secretary Liz Truss yesterday revealed there won’t even be a British refugee processing site in the city of Calais and that it will in fact be 70 miles away in Lille.
Shapps defended the UK’s record on providing an escape route for Ukrainians and insisted that the country’s president Volodymyr Zelensky did not want his countrymen travelling too far from their homeland.
“No country has given more humanitarian aid to Ukraine than the UK, in the world. We have given £400m, in addition the British people have been incredibly generous as well,” he said.
“Geographically we are, of course, spaced further to the West and President Zelensky and the Ukrainian government have told me that they do not want people to move far away, if at all possible, from the country because they want people to be able to come back.”