A COUPLE in Teignmouth are desperately trying to get their grandchildren to the UK from war-torn Ukraine.

Chris Clarke and his Ukrainian-born wife Lena, who is a British citizen, seem no nearer to getting their family out, 10 days after the UK Government announced its Family Scheme to allow applicants to join family members in the UK.

Lena, a pharmacy technician at Well Pharmacy in Teignmouth, has already flown out to Ukraine try to help her daughter-in-law Lesia and the children, aged two and five, to get to the UK.

Although Lena’s son Vladislav, his wife and children, Vlad junior, five, and Viktoria, two, live near the Romanian border, they have still had to endure the sound of warning sirens for the last week.

There has been no bombing as yet but Chris and Lena are desperate to get her daughter-in-law and the children out of danger.

Despite applying for visas for the children within hours of the scheme becoming available, there is no progress as they need to attend a visa centre for which they cannot get an appointment.

Chris explained: ‘Lesia and her husband have passports but the children have never been out of the country so they don’t have passports which is not unusual for children of their age.

‘Despite all the current “host a Ukrainian” publicity, the UK Government seems to be doing its very best to make sure my grandchildren don’t get here.

‘The shelling is getting further west so ideally we want to get them out as soon as possible.

‘But the visa process is a shambles.

‘There was a catch as to fully complete the process they had to make an appointment to visit a visa centre in Bucharest, Romania, in their case, which is a nine hour bus ride away.

‘Vladislav tried many times to make an appointment but every day, no appointments were available.

‘I don’t understand why the Government comes up with a scheme where it insists on children having passports.

‘It seems almost deliberately set up to fail.’

On Tuesday, the scheme was supposed to be upgraded so Ukrainian passport holders could apply online and come to the UK without needing to visit a visa centre but as of that afternoon, there was still no update.

Vladislav and Lesia’s brother and 85-year-old father will have to stay behind as all men aged over 18 are to remain in the country.

Chris said: ‘It could be relatively simple albeit, after queuing for many hours at the Ukrainian border.

‘They could get to Northern Romania, jump on a plane and land in London in about three hours.

‘But the UK Government appears to want them to spend several nights, who knows where, travelling overland for more than a thousand miles through Romania, Hungary, Austria and Germany to reach France or Belgium, where they will, hopefully, at some point, be able to attend a visa centre in either Paris or Brussels.

‘Do a two-year-old and a five-year-old, fleeing a war zone, really have to be put through this ordeal, so unnecessarily?’

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