York fund for Ukrainian refugee hosting scheme extended
The launch of the scheme in March 2022 followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine the previous month.Homes for Ukraine, otherwise known as the Ukrainian Sponsorship Scheme, allows UK households to sponsor arrivals if they agree to house them for at least six months.In York, the majority of Ukrainians who arrived as part of the scheme are now living in privately rented homes, while 3% are in social housing and 8% have returned to Ukraine, council figures show.The £656,000 fund will be used to pay for three workers and a manager to help people housed in the city, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.It will also fund trauma support for children, English lessons and employment assistance.York's City of Sanctuary migrant and refugee body has overseen the application process while also supporting arrivals and hosts.Councils including York receive £5,900 per arrival if they came to the UK after January 2023 to help them rebuild their lives and resettle into local communities.Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North or tell us a story you think we should be covering here.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
North Wales Chronicle
6 hours ago
- North Wales Chronicle
Starmer and Zelensky ‘welcomed' Trump's new deadline for Russia peace effort
In a call on Friday, the men agreed that 'it was clear Russia was the only barrier to peace', according to an official summary of their conversation. US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he was giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a shorter deadline – August 8 – for peace efforts to make progress, or Washington would impose punitive sanctions and tariffs. 'The Prime Minister began by sharing his condolences for the deadly attack on Kyiv in recent days,' according to the readout. It continued: 'It was a bitter reminder of the human cost of the awful conflict perpetrated by Russia, the Prime Minister added. 'The Prime Minister then updated on President Trump's visit to the UK, and both leaders welcomed the president's new deadline on Russia to stop their stalling tactics and make meaningful progress on a peace deal. 'It was clear Russia was the only barrier to peace, the leaders agreed.' Mr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, said on X that he had spoken to Sir Keir. 'Keir expressed his condolences over the deaths of our people as a result of Russia's attack on Kyiv,' Mr Zelensky said. 'It was an absolutely vile and brutal missile and drone strike that took the lives of 31 people, including 5 children. Our conversation today focused on how to stop the killings, provide greater protection for our people, and force Russia to end this war.' I spoke with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, @Keir_Starmer. Keir expressed his condolences over the deaths of our people as a result of Russia's attack on Kyiv. It was an absolutely vile and brutal missile and drone strike that took the lives of 31 people, including 5… — Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 1, 2025 Mr Zelensky said Russia 'genuinely fears' sanctions, 'no matter how hard it pretends that it couldn't care less'. He continued: 'Sanctions are undoubtedly working – and there will be more. We are working with everyone on coordinated restrictive measures. 'We discussed our cooperation with American partners, particularly the coordination of actions with President Trump and possible formats for peace negotiations at the level of leaders.' Mr Zelensky and Sir Keir also discussed battlefield technology. 'We discussed the urgent need to scale up drone production, especially interceptor drones,' the Ukrainian president said. 'There is a specific financial need, and we agreed to find a solution.' Number 10 said Sir Keir 'updated on the strong progress being made at rapid pace' and 'welcomed the passing of Ukraine's anti-corruption bill earlier this week'.
New Statesman
6 hours ago
- New Statesman
2,000 Metres to Andriivka is film-making at its rawest
Ukrainian servicemen walk through a charred forest at the front line a few kilometres from Andriivka. Photo by Mstyslav Chernov/AP Mstyslav Chernov's last film, 20 Days in Mariupol, won him multiple awards including the Oscar for Best Documentary, as well as a Pulitzer Prize. It remains deeply traumatising to watch, a day-by-day account of the Russian assault on the city and its inhabitants, showing the horrific destruction of life and the injuries suffered by people who can scarcely comprehend what is happening to them. Chernov was in Mariupol as a journalist, filing footage for news reports whenever he was able to get online. Only afterwards was the material turned into that brilliantly edited feature. He was determined not only to document what he was witnessing but to make it last. 'If you want something to stay in history, to have a persistent impact, then you have to go with a film language,' he has said. If 20 Days in Mariupol was released in summer 2023, at the same time as Barbie and Oppenheimer, it now seems the significant film of that year. While promoting 20 Days in Mariupol internationally, Chernov was returning to Ukraine to make his new film, 2,000 Metres to Andriivka, which differs from its predecessor in being conceived as a film project from the off, and in showing not civilians being massacred but Ukrainian soldiers fighting in the ultimately unsuccessful counteroffensive in the second year of the war. Andriivka is, or was, a tiny village of just 74 people, part of Bakhmut region in the Donetsk oblast of eastern Ukraine, captured by Russia in 2022. Retaking it became a key Ukrainian objective. The only route left to the village was a narrow, 2,000-metre strip of forest between heavily mined fields. In September 2023, after three months of deadly close-quarters fighting, the Third Assault Brigade raised the Ukrainian flag in Andriivka, but found practical difficulty in doing so, since the village was entirely destroyed. Then, in 2024, the Russians recaptured whatever remained. Much as 20 Days in Mariupol was structured by a sequence of days, 2,000 Metres to Andriivka is ordered by measurements of distance achieved towards the village over three months of fighting, an almost thriller-like device that clarifies events without alleviating the tension. The footage that Chernov has gathered is extraordinary. With drone footage providing overviews, much of the filming is by the director himself and his colleagues, boldly going out right alongside the soldiers. But about a third of the film is directly from the GoPro bodycams (in fact, mainly helmet-cams) that the soldiers wear in the field anyway for later analysis, giving a 360-degree field of vision in astonishingly sharp detail, which can then be re-framed. We see what they see, or at least what they are in the middle of, in an unprecedented way. It's the most immersive filming possible. Alex Garland effectively adapted this technique for his remarkable combat film Warfare earlier this year, made in collaboration with the Iraq War veteran, Ray Mendoza. But that was a dramatisation. This is real. What's confounding about what we see is that, despite the use of screens and drones, so much of the actual fighting – taking place in foxholes, using grenades, mortars and machine guns – could as well be the First World War. The burned earth and blasted tree stumps look like Paul Nash's hellscapes. It could be Verdun. But we are seeing it as has not been possible before. It is what John Keegan was attempting in The Face of Battle, fully delivered. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe In an opening scene, a young soldier, whom we have just seen joking ('Film how beautiful I am!'), is severely injured, all limbs shattered – and later we see his funeral. But, in his grave voiceover, Chernov comments repeatedly that many others of those we see have also died since being filmed. One 46-year-old volunteer chats about roll-ups vs other cigarettes, needing to make the well at his house deeper, his wife's pleas for him to come back, whatever it takes. 'I haven't done anything yet and here I am on camera,' he says. Five months later, Chernov tells us, he died in hospital from his injuries. In the final scene, at a roll-call, the soldiers all call out 'Present!' to a long list of call signs. They are, we realise, the names of their dead. In an excellent interview for the podcast Inside the Arthouse, Chernov, originally a stills photographer and novelist, laments that he is making films about war, when what he would like to be filming is cheetahs, pandas, penguins. But it is necessary, he says. 'The war wipes out everything, everything. Nothing survives it. And yet the very thing that survives is a memory. The question is, how do you keep it?' He also admits that his films are painful to watch. 'It is very, very hard to bring people to cinema and step into the warzone and suffer.' Watching these two documentaries back-to-back left me sapped, in a not dissimilar way from first seeing Elem Klimov's Come and See (1985). Yet they are necessary viewing, unlike any other contemporary cinema. [See also: With 'Chief of War', Hawaii gets the 'Game of Thrones' treatment] Related
Glasgow Times
8 hours ago
- Glasgow Times
Starmer and Zelensky ‘welcomed' Trump's new deadline for Russia peace effort
In a call on Friday, the men agreed that 'it was clear Russia was the only barrier to peace', according to an official summary of their conversation. US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he was giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a shorter deadline – August 8 – for peace efforts to make progress, or Washington would impose punitive sanctions and tariffs. 'The Prime Minister began by sharing his condolences for the deadly attack on Kyiv in recent days,' according to the readout. It continued: 'It was a bitter reminder of the human cost of the awful conflict perpetrated by Russia, the Prime Minister added. 'The Prime Minister then updated on President Trump's visit to the UK, and both leaders welcomed the president's new deadline on Russia to stop their stalling tactics and make meaningful progress on a peace deal. 'It was clear Russia was the only barrier to peace, the leaders agreed.' Mr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, said on X that he had spoken to Sir Keir. 'Keir expressed his condolences over the deaths of our people as a result of Russia's attack on Kyiv,' Mr Zelensky said. 'It was an absolutely vile and brutal missile and drone strike that took the lives of 31 people, including 5 children. Our conversation today focused on how to stop the killings, provide greater protection for our people, and force Russia to end this war.' I spoke with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, @Keir_Starmer. Keir expressed his condolences over the deaths of our people as a result of Russia's attack on Kyiv. It was an absolutely vile and brutal missile and drone strike that took the lives of 31 people, including 5… — Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 1, 2025 Mr Zelensky said Russia 'genuinely fears' sanctions, 'no matter how hard it pretends that it couldn't care less'. He continued: 'Sanctions are undoubtedly working – and there will be more. We are working with everyone on coordinated restrictive measures. 'We discussed our cooperation with American partners, particularly the coordination of actions with President Trump and possible formats for peace negotiations at the level of leaders.' Mr Zelensky and Sir Keir also discussed battlefield technology. 'We discussed the urgent need to scale up drone production, especially interceptor drones,' the Ukrainian president said. 'There is a specific financial need, and we agreed to find a solution.' Number 10 said Sir Keir 'updated on the strong progress being made at rapid pace' and 'welcomed the passing of Ukraine's anti-corruption bill earlier this week'.
