The Ukrainian parents of a Bracknell woman who are fleeing Russian bombs have been forced to travel another 300 miles by the UK Government’s “anti-human” refugee policy.
Tanya Noble’s father and disabled mother escaped in a minibus with no breaks and a flat tire amid Russian artillery shelling from her hometown near Kyiv to Slovakia.
Nataliia Ternova and Volodymyr Ternovyi have no money nor spare clothes and do not speak Slovak nor Polish, but the UK Government requires them to get a fingerprint scan in Poland to complete their visa application.
“It is ridiculous, it’s not right. It’s anti-human,” said Tanya, adding that her parents already have biometric passports issued two years ago.
“I am really stressed. I had to take time off sick from work because I cannot sleep properly; I am shaking all the time; I struggle to eat; I’ve lost a lot of weight already and every time I talk about it I just cry.”
Her parents were woken by explosions on March 2 in the town of Bila Tserkva, where a military base, airport and train station is located.
They spent five nights sleeping in the bathroom as glass shattered in their windows letting in temperatures of -7C.
Tanya, who works in Morrisons Bakery in Bracknell, said: “One evening I talked to my mum and she said ‘Tanya it is so scary,’ she started crying and said ‘the house next to us exploded’.
“I started having panic attacks, I didn’t know what to do.”
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After Tanya begged anyone she knew in her hometown to help her parents, they managed to flee in an old minibus for 36 hours to the Slovakian border.
“It was a lucky dip which country they take you, you can’t choose where you’re going,” said Tanya.
She asked an acquaintance at The Pines Pre-School in Bracknell who had Slovakian relatives if they could help her parents.
Batteries dead on their phones, Nataliia and Volodymyr waited with their names on a piece of paper for that friend of a friend of a friend to rescue them from the border.
They arrived in the town of Martin in northern Slovakia while Tanya filled in forms to apply for a UK family visa.
She was given an appointment for her parents' finger scans on March 14 – 300 miles away in Warsaw, she said.
Ukrainians refugees can enter the European Union without a visa and live there for three years, but if they want to come to the UK, they have to either have relatives here already and apply for a family visa, or have a British sponsor for their visa application.
The gov.uk website confirms that people in Slovakia looking for a visa application centre should apply through Poland.
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“My mum is disabled, she can’t walk, she can hardly move, she hasn’t got any money, underwear or clothes, she doesn’t speak the language. How [from] this one town in Slovakia can she get to Warsaw?
“If they even get to Warsaw, what next? It’s not a little place, how are they going to go from the train station to the visa centre? Where are they going to sleep? What are they going to eat? Who is going to help them?
“Even if I buy them a plane ticket, if they don’t have Wi-Fi how will they receive it?”
Tanya said she repeatedly phoned British Embassies in Slovakia and Poland as well as the Home Office in the UK.
“No-one can give us an answer. A man at the Home Office said: ‘There’s nothing I can do to help you. If it says Warsaw, they have to go to Warsaw.’”
She continued: “How I feel and a lot of people that I know feel [is that] the British Government are trying to get as less refugees as possible because they have put them in such difficult situations they will feel that people [are] maybe going to give up.”
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On BBC Breakfast, UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps acknowledged there were “lessons to be learned” in its response to the crisis which has seen more than two million people leave Ukraine to escape the Russian invasion.
Mr Shapps said 760 visas have now been granted, with 22,000 applications “on their way through”.
“With 6,000 appointments a day available now, you should see the processing rate increase,” he told BBC Breakfast.
But shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said the Government should start issuing emergency visas rather than requiring people to deal with lengthy bureaucracy.
As of March 8, Poland has taken in more than 1.29million refugees, Hungary 203,222, Slovakia 153,303 and Romania 85,444, according to the United Nations.
Their data shows the Republic of Moldova have taken in 82,762, while 235,745 have gone to to European countries further West.
On Monday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the Government will not introduce a system whereby Ukrainian refugees can come to the UK “without any checks or any controls at all”.
A spokesperson for the Home Office told PA Media the same day: “This is a rapidly moving and complex picture and, as the situation develops, we will continue to keep our support under constant review.”
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