I remain incredibly proud of the work that our community has continually done in supporting both Ukrainian refugees within our community, and their families back home on the frontline in their fight against President Putin's barbaric invasion. Like us all, I am truly heartened by the continued support and generosity from households up and down the country to people fleeing from Ukraine, and thanks to the generosity of spirit of tens of thousands of people, nearly 230,000 people have been welcomed to the UK from Ukraine. This is a truly extraordinary national effort and one we must sustain. Over two years on from the full-scale Russian invasion, we are all well aware of the devastating impacts of Russia’s unprovoked and unjustifiable war: millions of civilians displaced, countless lives – Ukrainian and Russian – lost, hundreds of hospitals and schools destroyed, and a generation of Ukrainian families scarred by abuse, trauma, and forced deportation.
As always, we continue to stand with the people of Ukraine and their President, who show such inspirational defiance, courage, and patriotism in the face of this evil aggression. I therefore wanted to provide an update on visa extensions for our Ukrainian guests, given local generosity and understandable interest, and following recent questions I have fielded locally on this, given that the first visas issued under the Ukraine schemes are set to expire in March next year. Indeed, in my role as the Minister for Legal Migration & the Border in the Government, I was pleased to announce last week that Ukrainian schemes visa holders will now be able to apply for a further period of permission to remain in the UK when their current visa expires. The Ukrainian people here understandably need certainty, as do their hosts, and I am proud that the UK is among the first countries internationally to provide this certainty, under a bespoke Ukraine Permission Extension (UPE) scheme. For clarity, further Ukrainians requiring sanctuary will also be able to come to the UK through the Homes for Ukraine scheme.
I therefore thought people locally might be interested to see the latest update, below, setting out the detail of the UPE scheme and outlining the key aspects of this new period of leave available for Ukrainians, which I will continue to work on delivering with colleagues across Government.