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Mar 6 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
NEW: Polish border guard confirms that over a million have now crossed its borders from Ukraine.

1 million in 10 days.
Polish Border Guard say that the million threshold was breached at at 8pm: “a million tragedies, a million forced from their homes by the war. One million people who after crossing the border heard from the Polish Border Guard- ‘you’re safe.’”
Translation you’ll be pleased to hear not from me but from @mpolachowska
Meanwhile the UK has so far granted 50 Ukrainian visas. Part of the disparity is about geography. But in a sense you’re not comparing like with like. Because the UK is the only major country in Europe which is even requiring a visa application. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-606404…
Ministers say the 🇺🇦 visa scheme is generous. That may be the case vis a vis previous refugee schemes. But by comparison to the policies adopted by virtually the rest of the whole continent the UK is an outlier in its response. I asked our Ambassador to 🇵🇱 about this on Thursday.
By contrast RTE reporting that over 900 Ukrainians have arrived in Ireland, which serves as something of a control for the geography vs bureaucracy question. rte.ie/news/2022/0306…
Ireland which has, as with much of the rest of Europe, waived visa requirements.
Home Office says 5,535 online applications have been completed and submitted and 2,368 people had booked a visa appointment to submit their application and biometric information. Also said that 11,750 people have started but not completed an online application.
Visa regime in UK vs EU (via @HouseofCommons Library)
Apologies even more arrived in Ireland than I said- is now over 1300.
Interested to hear from you if you are a Ukrainian who is trying to navigate the Home Office scheme for 🇺🇦, or you know someone who is doing so. DM me in confidence.
Home Office cites security concerns re waiving visa requirements, including possibility of agents of foreign regimes getting access to Britain. This is something I’ve reported on this week and I’m told it is happening in a handful of cases in Poland…
…but clearly it’s a tiny minority vs overall refugee numbers. Moreover it’s not something which is concerning other states to point of changing their policy. So Q is why UK is more concerned than other European states.

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More from @lewis_goodall

Lewis Goodall Profile picture
Mar 8
Historic moment for Parliament. President Zelensky addresses the House of Commons.

Zelensky: “The question for us now is to be or not to be. The Shakespearean question. For 15 days this question has been asked. I can give you a definitive answer is yes- to be.” ImageImage
Zelenksy invokes Winston Churchill, a fellow war leader. Says that Ukrainians will fight in the air, in the forests and in the streets.
Zelensky thanks Boris Johnson personally and the United Kingdom for its support. Asks for a no fly zone.
Read 5 tweets
Lewis Goodall Profile picture
Mar 8
NEW: UN High Commissioner for Refugees says the number of people who have fled Ukraine has now reached 2 million.

That’s equivalent to roughly 4.5% of Ukraine’s population.
Vast majority have gone to neighbouring countries, especially Poland.

As of yesterday the UK Home Office said it had issued visas for 300 of the 2 million. Or 0.015%.
As I’ve reported many times yes geography does matter and many refugees want to stay in region. But systems matter too and given UK is only major country in Europe requiring visas (and visas which cannot be applied for in country at that) the tiny numbers are not surprising.
Read 10 tweets
Lewis Goodall Profile picture
Mar 7
As I said earlier, what is remarkable is how organic and spontaneous the response is from so many Poles and Central Europeans. No one told them to do it. They’ve just done it themselves. Without being maudlin, it is pure goodness.
Despite its open borders, Marcin still thinks the Polish govt “is behind where the Polish public is” in terms of the generosity of its response.

But he does say this on the international front: “we won’t have enough space for everyone still to come. Poland needs help.”
You’ll be able to see more of this as part of my latest report from Poland on @BBCNewsnight tomorrow. Tune in.
Read 4 tweets
Lewis Goodall Profile picture
Mar 7
Humbling hour spent in the home of Kasia and Marcin. They’re just one of the enormous numbers of Polish families who’ve taken in a Ukrainian family, in this case Oksana and her two boys. A family of four has become a family of seven overnight-and an open ended commitment at that. Image
Poland has taken in over a million Ukrainians without refugee camps and that is down to the extraordinary generosity of Polish families like K&M. Without that charity Oksana and her boys would have had nowhere to go. K&M tell us lots of families in their street have done the same
Kasia & Marcin signed up with the council saying they’d host a family (they’d agreed to do it even before the war started). On Wed they got a call asking if they could pick up Oksana’s family from the station. They agreed. They’d never met before that day. Now they live together.
Read 9 tweets
Lewis Goodall Profile picture
Mar 7
Another day another station. This time Rzeszów, filled with refugees to take them to Krakow, Warsaw and beyond, Image
Every carriage packed to the rafters ImageImage
Train to Krakow. At this time on a Monday guard says this train would normally be almost empty. Instead it’s taking refugees to the rest of Poland and beyond. ImageImage
Read 18 tweets
Lewis Goodall Profile picture
Mar 6
1.36 million people have now left Ukraine. UN Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi: “This is the fastest moving refugee crisis in Europe since WW2.” Image
The total number of refugees leaving Ukraine in ten days is now greater than the total numbers of people who claimed asylum *throughout Europe* in the whole of the 2015 refugee crisis.

Over three quarters of a million people in Poland alone. Image
For context around 7 million fled Syria during the civil war.
Read 4 tweets

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