Ukrainian ambassador: my wife couldn’t get a visa

It’s been a pretty dreadful few weeks for Vadym Prystaiko. Kiev’s man in London has been doing his best to secure extra resources for his country’s struggle against the Russian invasion, though the calls of President Zelensky for a ‘no fly zone’ have gone unheeded. As if he didn’t have enough on his plate, Prystaiko has been summoned for a meeting of the Home Affairs Select Committee meeting, amid the ongoing crisis about visas for Ukrainian refugees.

Prystaiko has become something of a familiar figure in parliament in recent days: he received a standing ovation from MPs before last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions and popped up again in the public gallery yesterday’s before Zelensky’s speech to both chambers. Today’s appearance was less adulatory as Prystaiko detailed the Home Office’s foot-dragging over the issue of allowing Ukranians into the country, even before the war.

He told MPs that there have been no end of ‘bureaucratic hassles’ for years for his fellow citizens coming to the UK, with his own wife initially being denied a visa to join him – despite him being his nation’s representative. If Prystaiko’s wife had a hard time getting here in times of peace, what chance those ‘ordinary’ people fleeing Kiev in the face of Putin’s war machine?