Ukraine’s forgotten refugees: They fled Putin’s war too – but Britain won’t help because of their nationality

Refugees Welcome: Non-Ukrainian nationals who escaped the same invasion have been cut out of the schemes offering sanctuary. Now they find themselves alone with nowhere to turn, reports May Bulman

Those fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Przemysl, Poland earlier this year (Getty)

Samantha’s* heart still races with fear every time she hears a loud noise. She can’t shake the memory of bombs crashing around her, the terror each time the air raid sounded and she had to sprint to the nearest shelter in Kharkiv, her home of three years as she studied medicine.

Six months on from the start of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, though the 19-year-old Nigerian has escaped to safety, she faces yet more anguish. All she wants is to be with her close family in the UK - but while Ukrainian nationals are welcomed to Britain, Samantha is being blocked from doing so. Instead, she is living hundreds of miles away in an unfamiliar city, alone.

Several weeks ago, alone in her flat in Duisburg, Germany, Samantha heard fireworks going off outside during a festival. She thought the noises were explosions. “The night it happened, I was watching a movie and started hearing, ‘Boom, boom, boom.’ I had to lay flat on the floor. I called my mum, I was crying. I was telling her I don’t want to die.”

The UK government announced two designated schemes for Ukrainian refugees when the war hit: one allowing refugees to join family members in Britain and the other permitting them to join UK citizens willing to host them. However, they required that the applicant either had a Ukrainian passport themselves or was travelling with or joining a Ukrainian national.

These restrictions fail to take into account Ukraine’s international population. There were nearly half a million non-Ukrainians with temporary or permanent residence when the Russian invasion started, including more than 76,000 foreign students, mostly from Africa and southeast Asia. Many had chosen to study in Ukraine because they couldn’t access study programmes such as medicine, dentistry and engineering in their home countries, and the Ukrainian university fees are cheaper than in many other European countries.

Data from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) shows 325,000 third-country nationals have fled from Ukraine to neighbouring countries since the start of the war. They have become, in effect, Ukraine’s forgotten refugees – though they have fled the same Russian attacks as Ukrainian nationals, they are facing barriers to starting their lives again in the UK and across Europe, an investigation by Lighthouse Reports has found.

The Independent’s Refugees Welcome campaign has called for the UK to lead the way in supporting those forced to flee the war in Ukraine.

‘I feel very alone’

Samantha’s parents and siblings moved from Nigeria to Sheffield a year ago. They are now settled there: her parents have jobs and her younger siblings are in school. But the government’s exclusion of third-country national residents in Ukraine means she cannot join them, despite all the hardship she has faced. She describes spending two days sleeping on the floor of a metro station in Kyiv and waiting for hours on platforms in the snow due to difficulties boarding trains out of the country – something she attributes in part to racism.

“I thought applying for the scheme would work. The only logical thing I want to do is to be with my family,” says Samantha. “I want to have a normal life back. I want to go to school, I want to study. I want to have goals again. My mum is trying everything, trying to look for every option for how I can join them in the UK, but right now it seems like there’s nothing. I try not to let it get to me, but I feel very alone.”

The Home Office refuses to say how many people are in the same position as Samantha – while the department publishes data on applications to the schemes from Ukrainians and their family members, those who do not fit this criteria are excluded.

Nonetheless, even those who are related to Ukrainians - indicating that they should be eligible - have a far higher refusal rate than Ukrainian nationals, at 14 per cent compared with 0.4 per cent. A much higher proportion of third-country nationals with Ukrainian family members are also still waiting for a decision on their applications, at 45 per cent compared with 7 per cent.

Fleeing war for the second time

As well as tens of thousands of international students, there were more than 3,000 asylum seekers and refugees in Ukraine when war hit. Many others who moved to Ukraine after fleeing persecution in their own countries are believed to have been on work and business visas.

Kamran Mehdipour, 43, had been living in Kyiv for six years on a business visa when he was forced out of his home for a second time – while this time it was Russian bombs that led him to flee, in 2016 he had been forced to escape Iran after threats from the authorities over the political campaigning of his brother, Peyman, now a refugee in the UK.

Three days after the invasion started, Kamran rushed out of his rental apartment with nothing but a small rucksack and his three beloved dogs - Ice, Snow, and Darchin. He had to leave behind the grocery shop and deli he had set up in the Ukrainian capital.

“We left in a rush. With two friends, I got a lift to a place 25 kilometres from the Polish border, and we walked the rest,” he says. “I thought I would be able to go home again soon, but three months after I left, my old neighbour went to pick something up and sent me a picture of my apartment - it had been destroyed by a bomb.”

His brother Peyman, now a British citizen who owns a shop owner in Elgin, northern Scotland, contacted the Home Office helpline for advice on how his brother could join him in the UK. He says he was told he could apply under the Ukraine family scheme.

The damage to Kamran’s home, which was bombed after he left (Kamran Mehdipour)

The brothers immediately booked a visa appointment at the visa centre in Berlin and met in Germany to register an application. They then waited for three months to be told they had been refused on the basis that Peyman is not Ukrainian.

While Peyman is trying to appeal, Kamran is living in a makeshift refugee camp in Leer, a small town in northwestern Germany. He sleeps on a camp bed separated from other refugees by thin planks of plywood. Most people there are Ukrainians, who arrive and leave again to a new home within a matter of days, he says. Kamran has been there for more than three months.

“It’s not good. I feel lost. I feel I don’t belong anywhere,” says the 42-year-old. “When I was in Ukraine I was treated like a Ukrainian. I was being taxed like a Ukrainian. But now I’m here with nothing. I share a bathroom: four toilets, six showers between 150 people.”

‘Cruel and senseless exclusions’

Anais Crane, a caseworker at charity Here for Good, who is representing the brothers, says her team was contacted by several third-country nationals who had been residing in Ukraine lawfully and were now unable to join family in the UK. “In some cases, they have already fled persecution or internal conflicts in their country of origin, only to be forced to flee again – this time from Ukraine,” she said. “They cannot return to their country of origin.”

A UK government spokesperson said they would not comment on individual cases, but added that the Ukraine schemes were designed for Ukrainian nationals and that non-Ukrainians displaced by the war could apply to come to the UK “through one of our safe and legal routes, including work and study visa schemes”.

However, experts point out that these routes are difficult to access. Madeleine Sumption, of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, says: “In theory non-Ukrainians displaced by the war could apply for other visas, but this is no easy undertaking. Work and study visas in the UK are expensive. And people would either need to secure a skilled job offer from an employer who is a licensed sponsor and is willing to pay the substantial fees, or get admitted to a university or college where they can afford the international student tuition rates. There is no humanitarian visa to come to the UK.”

Indeed, no such route is available to Ahmad, 35, who fled from Afghanistan to Ukraine in 2015. He had come under threat from the Taliban because his brother, Idres Bakhshi, had worked for the British army in Helmand Province and was relocated to the UK in 2014. Ahmad built a life for himself in Ukraine -– until the Russian invasion began.

Kamran Mehdipour (left) with brother Peyman (Kamran Mehdipour)

Unable to return to Afghanistan with the Taliban now in power, Ahmad applied to join his brother Idres, 34, who is now a British citizen living in Colchester, under the Ukraine Family Scheme. But after three months, he received a rejection letter stating that he was not eligible because neither of the brothers was related to a Ukrainian.

The 35-year-old is in Hamburg, Germany, with no immigration status. He has requested temporary protection but is still waiting for a decision. He is staying with a friend of a friend but feels he has outstayed his welcome. Idres says his brother spends his days “walking around in the street, basically like a beggar”.

“I work full-time,” says Idres. “I’ve been sending him money in Germany. Why should I be sending him money if he could be here, and I have a place for him to live?” he says. “I never ever thought the application would be refused. He lived in Ukraine, I’m a British citizen, I worked for the British army. I was sure it was going to be fine. When I received the refusal I couldn’t tell my brother for two days. It was so hard to tell him.”

Zehrah Hasan, of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, which has been supporting Idres and Mohammad, said the UK government’s “piecemeal, discriminatory” Ukrainian refugee policy had led to “heartache, destitution and fear for the many refugees left stranded”.

“It cannot be right that young Nigerian students, or repeat-refugees, having already fled war in Afghanistan, have been blocked from joining family in the UK. We know that many refugees are in dire straits in mainland Europe, whereas they have the community support they need to rebuild their lives here in the UK,” she added.

“It's time they end the cruel and senseless exclusions built into their refugee policies.”

This article was amended on 11 March 2024 to change the name of one individual (*) to protect their identity .