Tuesday March 15 2022 | thetimes.co.uk | No 73731Tens of thousands of Britons offered
yesterday to open their homes to
Ukrainian refugees after ministers
opened an online registration site that
immediately crashed.
About 44,000 offers were received
within six hours from families with
spare rooms and organisations provid-
ing places under the Homes for
Ukraine scheme.
Refugees will be able to move in with
British families from this weekend,
regardless of whether they have ties to
the UK, and host households will get
tax-free payments of £350 a month. But
there were concerns that the scheme
could prove difficult to access as the
families or individual refugees will have
to be named by hosts to qualify.
In other developments:
6 China is willing to give military and
economic support to Russia in its war
on Ukraine, United States officials said.
6 President Zelensky will give an
address via video to the US Congress
tomorrow, Democrats have said.
6 An aide to President Putin admitted
that the Russian army had made slower
progress than expected as the Kremlin
said it would intensify efforts to seize
big cities.
6 Russian artillery hit an apartment
block within three miles of Kyiv city
centre, an escalation of the assault on
the capital.
6 A pregnant woman who was photo-
graphed being carried away from a
bombed hospital last week has died
from her injuries, along with her baby.
6 A convoy of 160 cars left the besieged
city of Mariupol, although no aid was
allowed in for the 300,000 people still
trapped there.
6 Squatters occupied a London man-
sion belonging to Oleg Deripaska, who
was sanctioned by Britain last week
over his close ties to Putin.
6 An activist broke into a villa in Biar-
ritz belonging to Putin’s daughter,
before being detained by French police.
6 A Russian journalist hijacked a state-
controlled television news broadcast,
waving a placard denouncing the war
and accusing her own channel of
peddling propaganda and lies.
Britain’s refugee scheme was
launched by Michael Gove, the com-
munities secretary, in the Commons
after days of criticism over a slow and
bureaucratic response to the crisis.
Gove told MPs: “I have just had it up
to here with people trying to suggest
that this country is not generous.”
Only 4,000 Ukrainians have been
given visas under a scheme for those
with family in the UK. Nearly three mil-
lion Ukrainians have fled the country.
Households who sign up to the new
scheme must make a commitment of at
least six months, but it is not clear what
will happen after that because all re-
fugees who come under the scheme will
be allowed to stay for up to three years.
Ministers said that the government
and local authorities would step in, but
they are already struggling to house
37,000 asylum seekers and Afghan
refugees now living in hotels at a cost of
£4.7 million per day.
There are also concerns about how
the hosts will be matched with refugees,
as they will have to name the people
they want to bring to the UK.
Households will not be compelled to
pay refugees’ living costs as the Ukrain-
ians who come under the scheme will
be able to work and will have access to
benefits, as well as education and
healthcare.
The government received more than
20,000 completed forms in the first two
and a half hours after the online portal
went live yesterday. Thousands more
would-be hosts were unable to submit
their offers, however, as the website
crashed repeatedly under the demand.
Those who wish to offer their homes
or a room to refugees must complete a
registration form telling the govern-
ment what they can provide.
Households who have signed up will
be subjected to “very light-touch
criminal checks” against the policenational computer to protect refugees
from exploitative people seeking to
take advantage of the scheme. How-
ever, the government has decided not
to use Disclosure and Barring Service
(DBS) checks for fear that the process
would delay the scheme by weeks.
A government source said: “These
people are coming from dangerous
situations, so getting them out of camps
or temporary accommodation where
they face the risk of falling into the
hands of people traffickers is para-
mount. DBS checks can take a really
long time and we decided to streamline
the process, which will still have broad
checks in place, but will not delay
people coming to the UK.”
From Friday, households and organi-sations that have passed basic security
checks will be able to fill out joint visa
forms with named refugees or families.
Refugees who have Ukrainian pass-
ports will be able to complete their
applications online, without a physical
appointment at a visa centre. Once
approved, they will be able to travel to
the UK and meet their sponsors. The
process can be completed in hours,
meaning that the first people allowed
entry under the scheme may arrive this
weekend.
Those who do not have passports will
have to attend visa centres in Europe to
submit biometric data such as finger-
prints and photographs before they will
be allowed to enter the UK, meaning
they will be made to wait longer.A second phase of the scheme will
start within the next few weeks to allow
charities and other organisations to act
as sponsors and bring far larger
numbers of people to the UK.
Almost three million people have
fled Ukraine since Russia invaded and
an estimated 1.7 million have travelled
to Poland. The Disasters Emergency
Committee has warned that growing
numbers of refugees who do not have
family in the European Union to help
them are fleeing anyway, and more
children are crossing the border alone.
War in Ukraine reports, pages 2-
Putin’s hollow regime could collapse
quickly, William Hague, page 29
Scheme will work only with charities in
the driving seat, leading article, page 33Matt Dathan Home Affairs Editor
Rush to take in Ukrainians
£2.20 £1.45 to subscribers
2G (based on 7 Day Print Pack)Refugee scheme’s website crashes as more than 44,000 Britons offer spare rooms in first six hours
Roman Abramovich was seen at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv yesterday before a jet linked to him departed for IstanbulAbramovich
‘part of £2bn
organised
crime scam’
David BrownRoman Abramovich was said last
night to be suspected of belonging to
an organised crime group that
cheated the Russian government out
of £2 billion.
The claim related to his involve-
ment in two deals to buy oil compa-
nies that made his fortune. The BBC’s
Panorama said a document smuggled
out of Russia showed that the govern-
ment had been cheated out of $2.7 bil-
lion in his deal to buy Sibneft.
The oligarch, who was seen yester-
day at an airport in Israel, paid about
£190 million for Sibneft in 1995, and
sold it back to the government for
$13 billion in 2005. Two years after
Vladimir Putin became president,
Abramovich was involved in the pur-
chase of Slavneft, Panorama said.
Officials wanted to charge him with
fraud over the Sibneft deal, the pro-
gramme said, but the investigation
was dropped because he was close to
Boris Yeltsin, then the president.
His lawyers told the BBC there was
no basis for alleging that he had
amassed his wealth through criminal-
ity. The BBC said it had not been able
to verify the five-page document, but
that other sources in Russia had
backed up many of the details.
Abramovich, 55, told the High
Court in London in 2012 that he had
given a business associate, Boris Bere-
zovsky, $10 million to pay off a Krem-
lin official in the Sibneft auction.
He formed a partnership in 2002
with another business to buy Slavneft.
A member of the delegation from a
Chinese bidder was kidnapped, and
released only after the company
withdrew, the document said.
There was no suggestion that
Abramovich knew anything about
the kidnapping. His lawyer did not
respond to a request for comment.
Finger pointed at oligarch, page 9REUTERS