Refugee mum may return to warzone over UK visa delays
A FRUSTRATED refugee mother is considering returning to war-torn eastern Ukraine after UK immigration delays left her stuck in Poland for weeks.
Katarina Tymashov, 34, said her sisterin-law Elena Hrybanov felt ‘beyond scared’ after the Home Office took more than a month to approve her visa.
While Mrs Hrybanov’s nine-year-old daughter Anna had her application accepted in just five days, her sevenmonth-old son Yehor is still waiting.
Until Yehor is given one, they are unable to join other family in London – and so she is contemplating returning to Ukraine, to be with her husband Olexandr. Mrs Tymashov said: ‘She is staying with a nice family in Poland who are trying to support her, but she has two young children and she is tired.’
Mrs Tymashov’s husband Vladimir, 34, added: ‘Right now, she feels frustrated.
‘She applied at the very beginning of the programme and she had really high hopes that, maybe in a week, she could join us. She has even considered moving back to Ukraine. The war is far from being over but sometimes it’s easier being with your family.’ Mr and Mrs Tymashov, who work in IT, moved to Wimbledon, south-west London, from Ukraine last July with their two sons Bohdan, 11, and Alyosha, six.
Mr Tymashov said they cannot contact anyone at the Home Office who can update them on the visas. ‘For Elena, now technically they are safer than they were in Ukraine, but they are struggling with the conditions,’ Mr Tymashov said at a Vigil for Visas demonstration outside the Home Office on Saturday. The family fled their home near Dnipro, in eastern Ukraine, in the second week of the war.
Once in Poland, they were forced to travel more than 300 miles just to visit a visa application centre because Yehor did not have a passport.
Despite their exhausting journey, the baby’s visa is yet to be approved.