‘UK’s total failure to help welcome refugees at border’

Humanitarian Train Brings Refugees From Ukraine To Slovakia
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Pressure is building on Thursday to dispatch officials to the Polish border with Ukraine to speed up the process of matching refugees with families in Britain prepared to house them.

It comes ahead of an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council scheduled for Thursday to address the escalating humanitarian crisis. More than three million people have already fled Ukraine to neighbouring countries, including almost one million children.

Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove announced on Monday that Britons with spare rooms would be paid £350 a month to accommodate people escaping the war zone under the Homes for Ukraine sponsorship scheme.

Already more than 100,000 people have registered their interest in providing sanctuary under the scheme.

However, ministers are facing criticism for the bureaucracy traumatised refugees who want to come to Britain are coming up against when they reach the Polish border and the absence of “on the ground” assistance to help them match up with sponsors.

Today Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey, who is at the Polish border, said he was “really alarmed” by the lack of British Government support for aid workers trying to support refugees flooding out of Ukraine.

He told BBC Breakfast: “The Government have got this scheme which is online…that’s not good enough, we need the British aid workers supported by the Government here, present, physical, able to welcome them with open arms then help them get to the UK so that all those amazing people in our country who want to give them homes can give them homes.

“I just think there’s a total failure by the Government and I’m really alarmed.”

He added: “I spoke to some aid workers from Britain who were offering soup and nappies to the mothers and children as they came over the border and they said they hadn’t seen any presence from the UK Government supporting British aid workers. That just isn’t good enough.”

On Wednesday, TV judge Robert Rinder, who has also travelled to the border to help the Red Cross, told the Standard that the Home Office needed to have a visible presence at all major train centres and reception centres at the Polish-Ukrainian border to help refugees navigate red tape.

Meanwhile, 13 buses carrying about 300 refugees from the besieged city of Mariupol have arrived in Russia’s Rostov region, its Interfax news agency reported today.

The planned meeting of the UN Security Council was called by the US, Britain, France, Ireland, Norway and Albania following the increase in shelling of civilian areas in recent days.

The US, UK and France are all permanent members of the council along with Russia and China.

Talks are also believed to be under way to enable Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to speak to the UN General Assembly — which is made up of all the member states.

The Red Cross is one of 13 charities supported by the Evening Standard’s Ukraine Appeal, which together with the Government matching funding and the appeal of our sister paper, The Independent, has raised more than £300,000 in total from more than 3,000 donors.

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