THE terrible war in Ukraine has only been going on for a few days, but already according to the United Nations refugee agency more than half a million people have fled Ukraine for neighbouring countries in search of safety and refuge. It is feared that over the coming days and weeks as the war continues, there could be as many as four million people who will be seeking refuge in neighbouring countries because of Vladimir Putin's illegal war of aggression, and millions more who will have been internally displaced within Ukraine as they seek to flee the fighting. We are potentially faced with the greatest refugee crisis and forced movement of people within Europe since the end of WW2.

The great majority of those who have fled Ukraine over the past few days have crossed into Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova, and Romania. Reports on Monday claimed that as many as 10,000 people per hour were crossing from the Ukrainian province of Transcarpathia into Slovakia.

EU countries have temporarily lifted visa requirements for Ukrainian nations, including countries like Poland and Hungary whose right-wing governments have been extremely hostile to the idea of accepting refugees in recent years. Both Poland and Hungary share land borders with Ukraine, and Poland, whose border with Ukraine is hundreds of miles long, has seen hundreds of thousands of desperate Ukrainians cross its border in recent days.

On Monday in the Commons, Home Secretary Priti Patel announced some concessions to allow more Ukrainians to come to the UK, but insisted that visa requirements and security and bio-metric checks would continue on Ukrainians seeking refuge from the war in the UK. Priti Patel avoided making a formal statement to the House, because if she had done so she would have had to respond to questions from MPs. 

Allowing up to 100,000 Ukrainians into the UK might sound significant, but that is a smaller number than are crossing from Transcarpathia into Slovakia in less than twelve hours. Most people in the UK are decent and compassionate and are sympathetic to the plight of Ukrainians. However, that compassion and decency is not shared by Priti Patel and the British Government. 

We are now in the shameful and humiliating place where the authoritarian and reactionary regime of Hungarian leader Viktor Orban has shown greater humanity and compassion in the face of an unfolding tragedy than the British Government, one of whose junior ministers, Kevin Foster, had the unmitigated gall to suggest on Sunday that if Ukrainians wanted to come to the UK in order to flee the war then they could apply for seasonal work visas and come to the UK and pick fruit. It seems that for this government of heartless shysters, their first response to any crisis is transactional and to try to turn it into a money-making opportunity for themselves and their cronies.

Even with streamlined visa requirements, expecting desperate people who may have fled their homes in a war zone at short notice to have their paperwork in order is unrealistic and cruel. Patel's statement on loosening but not removing displayed yet again that for this heartless and callous Conservative Party, the overriding priority is to pander to the nastiest tendencies of the right-wing gutter press, irrespective of the harm this does to the humanitarian needs of Ukrainian refugees. Still, you can't say that the Conservatives are not showing that the UK is a world leader, it's just that the Government of the UK is a world leader in being a shameful, selfish, and heartless embarrassment.

This piece is an extract from today’s REAL Scottish Politics newsletter, which is emailed out at 7pm every weekday with a round-up of the day's top stories and exclusive analysis from the Wee Ginger Dug.

To receive our full newsletter including this analysis straight to your email inbox, click here and tick the box for the REAL Scottish Politics