The longer war rages in Ukraine, the less the people will have to return to

The longer the war in Ukraine goes on, the greater the destruction, the greater the cruelty, and the less chance there will be that the refugees now flooding out of the country will have anything left to return to. History tells us that, very sadly, once a population is in flight from war or intense persecution, they and their children tend not to return when wars end and dictators are deposed.

Governments in Europe need now to turn their minds to what happens when the fighting is over, and what future there is for those “displaced” as the euphemism has it.

Whatever the answer to this crisis is, the 50 or so visas thus far granted by the British government is not it. This grudging and miserly allocation to Ukrainian asylum seekers is not an adequate response to the scale of the challenge that may soon become very real.

Of course, most Ukrainians have links with Poland and other relatively nearby nations, but 50 visas, not enough to fill a double-decker bus, looks tokenistic. For context, there are around 70,000 Ukrainians living in the UK, many willing to provide shelter or sponsor refugees.

The government’s response is embarrassing and shameful, and all the more so because it is so at odds with the sunny rhetoric of ministers promising uncapped and limitless schemes – whereas the reality is that the rules severely delimit their access, and bureaucratic obstacles to the rest render the pledges worthless. It is a cruel hoax on people who have suffered enough to be told at Calais to go back to Paris to fill in some forms.

Peering a few months into the future, it is possible to discern the grim outlines of a new reality in Ukraine. A puppet government installed in a renamed “Kiev” will be running a police state, and a continuing resistance/insurgency will ensure clampdowns and indiscriminate reprisals by the new “people’s republic”.

There will be no free press, nor free elections, nor protests in Maidan Square, and few human rights. Those involved in the defence of the independence of Ukraine, and their families, will be summarily subjected, Stalin-style, to execution, disappearance, dispossession and imprisonment.

The economy will be broken, and pivoted to the benefit of Russia. Ukraine will be to all purposes a colony of Russia. Streets and schools might be named after Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov. It is possible that another old trick of the Soviet Union, Russification, will be deployed to suppress the Ukrainian language and culture, and Russians encouraged to populate Ukraine, and replace those who have departed. The refugees will continue to try to escape. Putin may need to build a wall…

Much of the previously fast-developing country’s infrastructure is already devastated. Such reconstruction as there is will be built to Russian tastes and with all the attention to quality for which that country is renowned. If Groszny is anything to go by, the charm of the buildings will be replaced by bombastic towers.

The upshot? Many of those now seeking shelter in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova and Romania won’t have homes, jobs or even families to return to, and many will fear for their lives and the welfare of their children if they do go back. They won’t be able to return home, even if that is their dearest wish, because their homes are a pile of rubble and if they go back they might find themselves arrested as western spies.

So now the west needs to plan for future settlement and resettlement across Europe, given that it has failed to deter Russia from its invasion. Once the west indicated it would not fight for Ukraine, the consequences we see now were inevitable.

As part of that collective failure, Britain can and should play a more generous part in that effort than its previous efforts to provide shelter to those fleeing war and persecution in Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world.

We have supposedly taken back control over our borders, but we seem habitually unwilling to open them even when the public wishes it. Britain needs to take back control of its conscience as well, starting with some more visas.

The Independent has a proud history of campaigning for the rights of the most vulnerable, and we first ran our Refugees Welcome campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and launch this petition in the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we are calling on the government to go further and faster to ensure help is delivered. To find out more about our Refugees Welcome campaign, click here. To sign the petition click here. If you would like to donate then please click here for our GoFundMe page.