Europe is bending immigration rules for pets from Ukraine

AFTER AEU 12-hour train journey from Mykolayiv, a town on Ukraine’s south coast, Tatiana is ready to take her family into Poland. She stands outside the station in Lviv, a Ukrainian city 80km from the border, next to a pile of suit cases, her eight-year-old daughter and Gucci, a tiny dog whose camouflage-coloured coat is too thin to stop him shivering. “It was a simple decision” to bring Gucci, says Tatiana. “He is part of the family.” The has helped by relaxing the paperwork for refugees’ pets, as well as for the refugees themselves.Ukrainians fleeing Mr Putin’s war are bringing cats in carriers and dogs on leashes. As families break up, with fathers staying to fight, many see no reason to compound the children’s distress by leaving their pets behind.