Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky supports the UK government’s approach to the refugee crisis in the war-torn country, cabinet minister Grant Shapps has said.
The transport secretary said he was “proud” of the government’s approach, as he revealed only 760 visas had been granted for Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion.
Asked why the UK was still insisting on visa checks which had been dropped by EU countries, Mr Shapps told Sky News: “President Zelensky has asked us to proceed in the way we are doing.”
The minister said: “Geographically, of course, we’re space further to the west. President Zelensky and the Ukrainian government have told me that they do not want people to move far away from the country, if at all possible, because they want people to come back.”
Mr Shapps added: “We’re doing that in close coordination with president Zelensky and the Ukrainian government who want to keep people as close to Ukraine as possible.”
The minister claimed the UK’s approach was “respecting Ukraine’s wishes, the government’s wishes, not to pull people a long way away from Ukraine”.
Mr Shapps said the UK’s insistence on visa controls for Ukrainians was the correct approach for security reasons. “It’s not beyond Putin to send people here to cause trouble – we do need to know who is coming into the country,” he told LBC.
He also said the decision not to have a visa application centre in Calais was to avoid Ukrainians becoming targets for criminal people-smuggling gangs operating around the Channel port.
“We know very much there’s a criminal people trafficking operation that runs out of Calais,” the minister said. “Which is certainly something we don’t want people escaping war to then get caught up in.”
Mr Shapps revealed that 760 visas had been granted to Ukrainians from 22,000 applications to the special family route, with 6,000 slots available at processing centres for people who are seeking visas.
The minister said a new visa centre would be set up in Lille soon, 70 miles from Calais, and the number of visas granted would “expand rapidly”.
Mr Shapps argued that the Lille centre would allow more Ukrainians to have their paperwork in order before arriving at Calais to cross.
“We do not want to see this mixed up with the wider issue of people traffickers and criminal gangs in Calais, so we don’t want to attract people to Calais without having the paperwork resolved in the first place.”
Asked if he was embarrassed about the visa situation, Mr Shapps told the BBC: “I’m sure there’s always lessons to be learned in these things. But you are dealing with a war situation – funnily enough Putin didn’t put much consideration into what would happen to refugees out of this war.”
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper called for the government to issue emergency visas “that can be issued really swiftly” in light of the fast-changing situation in Ukraine.
“It just beggars belief that people are being asked to do this [visa forms] when they have fled a war zone, when they have had to leave everything behind, when they have been risking life and limb, in the face of Russian bombardment. People shouldn’t be treated like this,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Conservative MP Caroline Nokes was among the many backbenchers attacking the Home Office response to the crisis and ministerial claims to be moving “at pace”, saying: “Snails also move at pace”.
Home Office minister Kevin Foster refused to say if the sponsorship scheme – allowing Britons to sponsor Ukrainians without family in the UK – would take “weeks or months” to get underway.
