Nadiia Luba was sheltering in a basement in central Ukraine earlier this month when she learned that her family’s chances of escaping to Britain had been dashed.
After nearly eight months of waiting for visas for her and her two sons, she got a text to say that the British host who had been so ready to welcome them had died suddenly. “I couldn’t stop crying,” she said. “My brain didn’t want to accept it.”
Luba is one of 9,700 Ukrainians still waiting on a visa decision to join a host in the UK under the Homes for Ukraine scheme. Volunteers helping to match families say they have seen an increase in waits of six months or more, where no news is communicated by the Home Office.
Luba, 43, who teaches English to schoolchildren in her village just outside Vinnytsia, is despairing about her future. As the anniversary of the start of the war approaches, she is worried about another increase in Russian attacks coming before she can get her sons Dima, 10 and Vlad, 14, to safety. “All our friends are leaving Ukraine now because they are afraid. In January it was very dangerous because rockets were exploding and we haven’t got a proper place to hide, only a home basement. It’s not safe.”
Her host, Helen Creegan, 53, a retired prison officer from Pudsey, had become a good friend and offered a way out of Ukraine – but that ended abruptly when Creegan was found dead at home on the afternoon of 2 February. “It’s too cruel,” Luba said. “ She was a real friend to me those eight months.”
Creegan had emptied three rooms in her five-bedroom house, bought new bedding and towels and even offered to find space for the Luba family’s pet dachshund. In an interview the morning before she died, Creegan spoke of her worry about the family. She said of her messages from Luba: “It’s just despair. She’s trying to do her best for her, for her family and her children and she’s losing hope.”
When Russian rockets fell on Vinnytsia in July and Luba’s youngest son was nearby on a bus with his father, Creegan complained to the Home Office and begged them to act, but they would not explain the delay. “There’s no communication from them,” she said. “It’s downright rude. I put in a complaint to the Home Office and I got this snotty email back and I was livid, because they hadn’t done anything, they weren’t doing their job.”
Luba hopes to find a new host, and will then have to apply all over again, but she still has no idea why their visas were not granted before. “It would be easier for me to understand if there was an explanation,” she said.
Meanwhile, she says, her sons are starting to lose hope: “They think that it’s the end of our dream.”
Jagger Biggs, a volunteer in Manchester with the group UK Aids Ukraine, which was set up to match families with British hosts, said: “We’ve seen countless cases of long delays to applications since the Homes for Ukraine scheme opened. Regrettably, these delays are getting worse as the months go by.
“At best, families are in awful limbo and unable to start rebuilding their lives. At worst, they are in grave danger, risking the lives of their children every day. Ukrainians applied for UK visas at a time of huge need in their lives, grateful for the opportunity. These delays are a shocking betrayal of their trust in our Home Office.”
So far, 152,000 visas have been granted under the Homes for Ukraine scheme but this is of little consolation to Iryna Sovolvska, who first applied to come to Britain in March last year and still has no visa. When Sovolvska, 42, applied along with her children, Nellie, 10, Ola, 12, and Denis, 16, she was turned down after three months. They were told this was because their host, a registered nurse, had not passed checks.
She applied with a new host in June last year, whose MP is the immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, but despite his office trying to help, no visa has materialised.
The host, Joanna Goldsbury, 65, from Newark in Nottinghamshire, said she had uniforms ready for the children to start school last September and had been offered no explanation by the Home Office for the continued delays. “It’s disgusting,” she said. “They just don’t seem bothered.”
Though the family live in the relative safety of western Ukraine, near Ivano-Frankivsk, they still fear missiles and Sovolvska’s children frequently have lessons in shelters. “In reality there’s no calm place in Ukraine,” she said. “There’s no place where you can just live your life normally”
A Home Office said: “In response to Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine, we launched one of the fastest and biggest visa schemes in UK history. 161,400 Ukrainians have now arrived safely in the UK through our Ukraine visa schemes. We are processing visas as quickly as they come in – enabling thousands more Ukrainians to come through our uncapped routes.”
