Ukraine enters “crucial” 24 hours as UK debates policy for Ukrainian refugees

As a two-day curfew lifts in Kyiv, the capital remains under Ukrainian control. President Volodymyr Zelensky has described the next 24 hours as a crucial period for the country. Over the weekend, peace talks were agreed but President Vladimir Putin also announced that Russian nuclear forces are being put on high alert. There is a high degree of optimism about Ukrainian resistance, though Russia has many more troops surrounding Ukraine still to go in. President Zelensky is using social media to highlight military and political support from the West, while his appearances on Ukrainian Strictly Come Dancing and the fact he was the Ukrainian voice of Paddington Bear (the story of a refugee) circulate widely online.

Much of the focus in the UK is on our refugee policy. The EU declared yesterday that it had unanimously agreed to take in Ukrainian refugees for up to three years without first asking for asylum applications. Boris Johnson said any person settled in the UK can bring over Ukrainian family members – but this only applies to spouses, long-term partners, children, children’s parents and care receivers, which excludes the parents of adults, adult children and siblings.

Labour has called for “wider family” to be included and for the details to be made clear “as soon as possible”. “We have to have a generous scheme that is equivalent to the scheme that we offered people after the Balkans crisis,” David Lammy urged. The visa restrictions on Ukrainian refugees are “immoral”, the Shadow Foreign Secretary declared. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said this morning that the UK has a “very generous” track record on refugee policy in these situations and it is thought the rules will change soon. But concerns over the nationality and borders bill – now entering its final parliamentary stages – have been underlined.

In the meantime, Labour’s factional warring continues, even under these circumstances. Young Labour’s Twitter account was restricted “until further notice” on Friday after “tweeting bollocks” – in the words of a Labour source – about NATO and Ukraine. Momentum said it was an “anti-democratic attack on young members”, while Labour to Win said head office had to step in because Labour is “not a party of Putin apologists”. Zarah Sultana then said she had received a death threat because comments about a Stop the War statement she and other MPs signed “crossed the line from false to dangerous”. On Sunday, David Lammy said that by by signing that same statement Jeremy Corbyn was “effectively parroting the lines that are coming from Vladimir Putin”.

If you want to know the latest in the Labour national executive committee (NEC) elections, LabourList has the Labour to Win slate of candidates released last month (their incumbents plus Abdi Duale and Jane Thomas) and the left slates unveiled on Friday. The Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance talks did not agree on a single set of endorsements: Momentum backed four (their incumbents plus Young Labour chair Jess Barnard); other, smaller, groups are supporting seven (Momentum’s four plus Maryam Eslamdoust, Deborah Hobson and Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi). Again, disunity on the Labour left is on full show. Meanwhile, the Labour North conference on Sunday elected pro-leadership representatives to the chair and vice-chair posts of its regional executive.