Are we experiencing compassion fatigue when it comes to Ukraine?

By Tsvetelina Stancheva

More than ten million people have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded Ukraine and roughly 135,000 have reached Britain, according to gov.uk.

While other European countries have accepted hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, only about 90,000 people have so far arrived in Britain under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, where refugees must find UK hosts to sponsor them. Another 45,000 Ukrainians arrived in the country thanks to the Ukrainian family scheme, for those with existing family connections to the UK, according to the most recent figures.

The figures on the gov.uk show that Britain received about 135,000 visa applications and 20,000 people were still left waiting for theirs to be issued – but in the first month of the scheme, very few visas were issued at all, due to red tape.

Many families who applied to be hosts are extremely frustrated with the length of the process.

“It shouldn’t be that hard to let people in the country. Many countries which are far less capable of supporting the Ukrainian refugees are accepting hundreds of thousands of people and we are here asking them to fill in 54 pages of documentation,” said Izaak Nazor, 28, a concierge worker from East London, who is waiting patiently to host someone in need.

“There are so many hosts who are waiting to help and host Ukrainian families. It’s been more than four months since I signed up to be a host and still haven’t heard anything. Yet, every time I watch the news countries like Poland and Romania have accepted millions of them already. What do we do wrong? Why are we stopping those people from coming in?”

The EU countries have granted Ukrainian refugees the right to stay and work throughout its 27 member nations for up to three years. People who can’t stay with friends or relatives are being placed in reception centres and they are being given food and medical care. They are also granted access to medical treatment, housing, and schools.

Nazor is convinced that the UK government made the process this hard, so less people show interest in taking part and eventually get annoyed with the whole Ukrainian-Russian situation and forget about it.

Compassion fatigue

*Credit: Max Kukurudziak at Unsplash.com*

As time passes, the media coverage of the Ukrainian-Russian war decreases. Fewer media coverage is seen and less interest from the people, which leads to compassion fatigue. Most people do not want to hear about the happening situation anymore and do not want to be involved in it in any way.

According to Anya Petrovna, 19, a Ukrainian refugee who now has a host family, when most people talk to her and figure out that she is a Ukrainian refugee they just change the topic straight away and pretend that it’s nothing.

“There were so many protests and ‘you are not alone’ posters at the beginning of the war, but just a few months later people forgot about us. News coverage is not accurate and not at all enough. Slowly people stopped talking about what’s happening and soon they gave up on hosting because the process is a big pain,” said Anya.

“I was in a refugee centre when I heard the news of the new scheme to send refugees to Rwanda. I was shocked to my very core and super scared. Did those people actually think of how this news will hit those poor people after running away from their homes and country with nothing but the clothes on their backs?” said Anya Petrovna, 19, a Ukrainian refugee who now has a host family.

“It seems like the government is doing so much and working overtime just to get rid of refugees, but make it look good for the rest of the world,” she added.

“Some of my relatives are still in refugee camps and I am scared if they will manage to find a host family and if not, what will happen to them. The family I am in could take only me and my little brother. We had to leave our parents behind.”

Does the UK want to help refugees or is it just publicity?

At the beginning of the Ukrainian-Russian war, many countries started offering shelter to the Ukrainian refugees and not long after that, the UK introduced a family visa scheme for people who have an immediate or extended family member in the UK.

The government got a lot of backlash because of the speed and scale of its response and after that, another scheme was launched, the Homes for Ukraine scheme. This scheme allows people to settle in the UK without them having any relatives in the country.

“I think I was one of the first people who welcomed a Ukrainian family. I was so happy to be able to help. The thing that bothered me was that half of my friends applied to be hosts too and none of them heard back yet. The papers to fill in are a nightmare and it looks like the government is just using refugees for good publicity. They barely allowed any refugees in the country,” said Svetla Dubova, 43, a freelance programmer from Bulgaria.

“They want to ‘help’, but they make it so complicated. By the time the whole process is done those people can get hurt or get lost or die. This is not a joke; we are talking about human lives.”

People who applied to be sponsors have complained that the system is very complicated and extremely slow.

How to become a host?

Can we integrate the refugees?

Many people are worried that even after allowing some of the refugees to enter the country, they will not easily be integrated into life here. It is already hard for some of them to find host families and trying to find a job or start studying without having any documentation or even proper clothing will be almost impossible.

“I would love to start university. I don’t see this happening any time soon though, because of the situation I am in. My parents are literally homeless. They are staying in a refugee camp. It will be impossible to get Student Finance and I can’t even get a job. It is a nightmare,” said Anya.

“I really hope the government will try and make it easier for us. We want to work; we want to study. We do not want to be seen as a burden. We are human like you.”

Anya will not give up on her dream to graduate from university. She will keep pushing and trying to find a way to get in. Her wish is simple – make things like schools and jobs more accessible to refugees.

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