Government says priority is to support British nationals and families in Ukraine first and people should go to first safe country
Charities have urged the UK government to welcome refugees from the conflict in Ukraine on the same scale as the thousands of families from the Balkans resettled during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s.
In a letter to the Times, the charities, which include Save the Children, Amnesty International and the Refugee Council, asked the UK to lead international cooperation to “handle a sudden increase in the number of people forced to flee” the conflict, which threatens to be the most significant in Europe since the collapse of Yugoslavia.
The US has warned that five million people could be displaced by the conflict.
