A couple that fled their Kyiv house when Russia invaded Ukraine has moved back due to the high expense of renting in the United Kingdom (UK). Joe and Irina Place claimed that their monthly expenses in England would be £1,500 as opposed to £500 in western Ukraine.
Even if rent has increased in some areas of Ukraine, “coming from the UK it’s still incredibly reasonable,” the couple was quoted by BBC.
The Sheffield native Joe declared that he would not go back to Kiev because “it is not safe there, but it is largely safe here.”
The pair, who met in 2019 while they were English teachers in Ukraine, fled to the UK in February to avoid the unrest there.
Joe Place, a 34-year-old Ukrainian content manager and PhD candidate from the United Kingdom (UK), and his wife travelled under the family visa programme and were thus ineligible for the Homes for Ukraine programme.
Before looking for a house in either Sheffield or Nottingham, he claimed they first stayed with friends and relatives. However, he claimed they were confronted with “terrible” living conditions, expensive expenses, and rental restrictions they couldn’t satisfy.
“We doubled our budget and more … we had a very strict list of requirements and we just kept going ‘OK, well, compromise on this, compromise on this, compromise on this”.
“Anything we got even remotely close to getting was just terrible.”
However, they decided to come back and establish a house in Uzhhorod when they visited family in western Ukraine in September.
“We realised we actually quite like it back here, and we’re OK,” said Joe.
Irina was on a Ukraine Family Scheme visa when the pair first met in Ukraine in 2019. She said, however, that she did not receive the same level of assistance from the government as individuals on the Homes for Ukraine scheme.
Joe said that because Russia has been striking Ukrainian infrastructure with missiles, they have prepared themselves for electricity and heating outages. “That is something that is going to affect all of us, and that’s going to be difficult.”
The government had stated that the Homes for Ukraine and Ukraine Family schemes were “one of the fastest and biggest visa programmes in UK history”.
