‘It cannot be right for a 12-year-old girl to have to go back to a war zone’
It has been four weeks since 12-year-old Diana Demchyna was taken in darkness across the Ukrainian border to Poland on the first leg of her journey to Britain.
Her parents, who cannot leave Ukraine due to their work, had arranged for Diana to live with her relative, Olenka Pevny, in the UK until the war was over.
Pevny, a professor at the University of Cambridge, was assured twice by the Home Office that Diana would be able to come to Britain under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. She filed the paperwork on 24 March and flew to Poland the following week to collect her young relative.
They have been waiting there ever since. Diana’s application is among tens of thousands stuck in a byzantine system that charities say is worsening the trauma of those fleeing war.
Pevny, 58, said she faced the prospect of having to send Diana back to Ukraine as she could no longer afford to stay in Poland.
“It cannot be right for a 12-year-old girl to leave a war zone and then, because the UK has a glitch in their visa scheme, have to go back to a war zone where Russians are committing war crimes against children and mothers,” she said.
“We’re reading about all these mothers and children, who are Diana’s age, who are being raped around Kyiv. Can I actually as a human being return this child to Ukraine?”
Pevny was told twice by the Home Office to apply to host Diana under the Homes for Ukraine scheme because, as a distant relative, she would not qualify as a close family member, although they are incredibly close as families and celebrate all their holidays together.
But weeks after submitting an application under Homes for Ukraine, she found out that the rules had changed so that unaccompanied under-18s could not be brought to Britain.
The safeguarding reasons behind this may be sound, but the change was not publicised or communicated to Pevny, who only found out when her MP, Daniel Zeichner, looked into her case. She now faces another long wait as her application is rerouted to the family scheme, with no prospect of success.
Pevny said Diana was “traumatised” by the process: “She thinks that the UK does not want her. She thinks that I will leave her in Poland or send her back to the war zone. There must be a better way for the UK to help innocent children who are victims of the Russian war of aggression.”
‘UK has fundamentally let down a group of people we should have been there for as a country’
Charlie Richards, a market research consultant, has found himself managing visa applications on behalf of 22 Ukrainians who fled their homeland when Russia invaded.
The group consists of six families of people aged from three years old to 70. They are scattered across Europe as they approach their sixth week of waiting for the green light to travel to the UK.
Richards, 35, discovered on 4 April that more than half of his 22 applicants had been approved for visas but had not received them. He learned this only because Home Office officials visited a Ukrainian cultural centre near his home in Reading, so he asked them to check the status of their applications.
They had been approved, some weeks ago, but never sent. He was astonished; the Home Office officials looked concerned. They came back four days later after looking into the issue. “They recognised it was a problem,” Richards said.
The government only officially acknowledged the problem on Thursday, the day parliament was prorogued. Potentially thousands of people could have arrived in the UK weeks ago if their visas had been dispatched as soon as they had been approved.
Three of Richards’ cases received visas 16 days after they were authorised. But that family are still in limbo halfway across Europe because three of their group are still waiting for their paperwork.
Richards said the UK had “fundamentally let down a group of people we should have been there for as a country”.
He added: “When you see that tens of thousands of people have supposedly been granted visas but haven’t got here yet, it’s impossible not to think the problem could be that widespread.”
‘I don’t think they realise what we have been through’
Alexandra, a Ukrainian refugee, said she was at a loss to understand why she has had to wait six weeks for a straightforward visa application to be processed. She fled Kherson and her visa application was lodged on the day the scheme opened, 18 March.
“I feel like it’s a joke and a game from government for us,” she said. “It makes me so mad, the suspense and zero information. I don’t think they realise what we have been through.”
Since fleeing Kherson with only her passport and a few items of clothing, Alexandra has been on a dangerous journey passing through Russia, Turkey and Bulgaria to get to Romania, where she is waiting for her visa to come through.
A home is waiting for her in Warwickshire, where she has been sponsored by Daniel Edwards. But still the wait goes on.
“I’ve exhausted so many different options trying to get in touch with MPs, the Home Office helpline, the visa office but there are still no results and no hope,” said Edwards.
“The woman I’m sponsoring has been on such a dangerous journey from border to border. The visa should have arrived at least four weeks ago. It’s an absolute disgrace that it’s now more than 40 days since the original application.”
