The Times Magazine 15says. Then, apologetically, he has to end our
phone call – along with organising the trip to
Poland, Kandiah has six children, and they’re
calling him for his tea. Like Emily Eavis,
Mr Wheat and everyone else who has
volunteered their homes, this is something
he’s trying to fit around his normal life.
Because the thought of people being trapped
in a country slowly being decimated, simply
because of paperwork, is unbearable.
Like most people, I’ve never spoken to
someone whose home town is currently being
destroyed by an invading army.
I had thought, just before we FaceTimed
Veronika, that she was in Poland, safe, and
waiting for her visa to the UK.
As Eavis dials her number, I learn that she
is still in Kyiv – with her son and husband.
Last night, I’d watched footage from the
outskirts of Kyiv, which looks like a hellscape
of winter, mud, shattered concrete and lines of
burnt-out tanks. It seems unthinkable that a
family are still living there, when there is a
house waiting for them in Somerset.
Veronika’s face appears on Eavis’s mobile.
She’s a mum, with a nine-year-old son, and
a job in HR. For a moment, I don’t know
what to say. Then I realise: I just want to
know everything.
“Hi, Veronika,” I say. “How are you?”
“Not bad,” Veronika says, looking like
someone who really knows what “bad” looks
like. “It’s better now, I guess. For three days it’s
a little bit quieter, no bombs. But we still have
sirens, so we need to go to the safe place.”
The “safe place” isn’t a shelter – it’s the
entrance to their apartment, where “there are
no windows”. Every time the alarm goes off,
they stay there – “for 30 minutes now. Before,
it was three hours.”
What does your son do when the sirens
go off? “He is not nervous because we try to
read; he plays some computer games on his
mobile. So he’s brave, I guess.”
Veronika has tried to get her family out of
Kyiv – looking at both western Ukraine, away
from the front lines, and Poland, but “mostly
all places to live were not available, even in
Poland: even if you want to rent, not to live
for free, it will be a problem, because they do
not have available places.” Emily Eavis’s offer
of accommodation in Somerset is the only
solid offer she has.
Veronika applied for UK visas for her, her
sister and her son “three weeks ago”, but has
heard nothing. She can still do some of her
job online – she works for a Ukrainian water
company – and spends the rest of her time
crocheting toys, “to keep my mind busy”. Her
apartment is on the 15th floor. “We hear all
the bombs, all the tanks, all these sounds.
We see fires.”
Veronika starts talking about what she has
been discussing with one of her colleagues, who
is from “a small suburb of Kyiv”, and “terrible”
things have been happening there. “Russian
soldiers killed civil people, children even,
animals – they ate dogs. They killed them and
ate them. We saw photos – a street and lots
of people who are dead. They have been there
two or three weeks. It is called Bucha.”
I tell her, gently: we have heard of Bucha. It
is headline news around the world. Everyone
knows what has happened in Bucha.
“I want everyone to know, I am against this
Russian president, for sure, but I don’t know
if I am against the Russian people – I know
some of them, and they are also against this
war, even if they live in Russia,” Veronika says,
suddenly very animated. “I don’t want these
Russian soldiers to come to Ukraine – because
they did very, very bad things to Ukrainian
people. Tanks won’t come to Kyiv – because
we have great soldiers, they will protect Kyiv
for sure. They won’t give Kyiv to any Russian
soldiers. But we are afraid of rockets. We are
very afraid of Russian rockets. We hope to
come to you soon – but we still wait.”
After Eavis and I end the FaceTime with
Veronika, we are silent for several minutes.
There is something emotionally obscene in
saying, “Goodbye,” to someone who will now
put their phone down and spend the rest of
the day listening out for rockets that might
hit their house.
“She says she’s crocheted loads of toys for
our children,” Eavis says, finally. “She says
she’ll make them for anyone who wants them.
She’s horrified about feeling like a burden. She
just wants her family to be safe.”On the train back to London, I am so full
of helpless anxiety and fury that first I go
to make a gov.uk petition – to call for the
waiving of visas for refugees. I see that not
only has a petition been started, but that it has
already got the required 100,000 signatures,
and was raised as an issue in parliament.
On April 6, it got this response from Priti
Patel, the home secretary: “Russian troops are
seeking to infiltrate and merge with Ukrainian
forces. Extremists are on the ground and
in the region too. Given this, and also with
Putin’s willingness to do violence on British
soil... we cannot suspend any security or
biometric checks on people we welcome to
our country. We have a collective duty to keep
the British people safe, and this approach is
based on the strongest security advice.”
So, how are those checks going, then?
It’s been over a month now. Ten millionUkrainians have fled their homes, of which
Poland has taken in 2.6 million, Romania
709,000, Hungary 434,000, Moldova 415,000,
Slovakia 323,000, France 45,000, Italy 91,000,
Germany 310,000, and Ireland 21,000.
The official total in the UK, on April 8,
under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, was
just 1,200.
I go on to Twitter, and ask, “Has anyone
on here who’s applied to sponsor a Ukrainian
refugee actually had them arrive yet?”
Over the next three hours, my “replies”
column scrolls on and on, with the same
answer, over and over: “No.” “No.” “No.” “No.”
Stig Abell, at Times Radio, has a story
of the kind of impossible determination
necessary to work with the sclerotic system.
“We spoke to a magnificent lady on the radio
who drove to the Polish border, met a family,
drove them to Berlin, then to Calais, waited
several days while the system ground slowly
around them – and got them home to
Cornwall last week.”
Comedian Sue Perkins, This Is Going to
Hurt author Adam Kay, Sky News reporter
Samantha Washington – people with the
confidence to deal with tough bureaucracy- all replied they were still waiting. Several
retired civil servants tweeted to say they
would be “delighted” to come out of
retirement to “help out” with the paperwork - one of them posting a poll from Rooms
for Refugees, which has reported that 83 per
cent of its volunteers had heard nothing since
they’d officially registered as refugee hosts.
“We’d love to help. We know the system.”
There was one particular, worrying
response that came up time and time again:
that, yes, visas had been issued – but to only
one member of a family. The children had
visas, but the mothers didn’t – or vice versa.
And so, of course, the family could not travel
to the UK.
It was such a common response that
it was difficult not to conclude that this must
be a deliberate tactic: allowing the Home
Office to state, factually, that it has issued
40,900 visas – while still stymieing the
actual flow of refugees into the country. The
British public have signed up to the schemes,
prepared their spare rooms, learnt to say
“Pryvit” (hello) and “Laskavo prosymo”
(welcome), but still, no one is here.
As I write this piece – on April 12 – Boxes
still sits empty. West Pennard School waits.
Russian forces are gathering in the east of
Ukraine. Eavis texts Veronika every day – but
there’s still no news about her visa. n
‘We are afraid of rockets. We are very afraid of Russian
rockets. We hope to come to you soon – but we still wait’