KYIV

THOSE WHO FIGURED Irish leader Simon Harris’s recent visit to Ukraine was a ham-fisted publicity stunt to give him an international profile ahead of a general election on the Emerald Isle later this year, may find that there was a more pragmatic reason for his meeting President Zelenskyy: Irish plans to encourage Ukrainian refugees sheltering on its territory to go home and shoulder some of the burden of the war with Russia.

“The charitable accommodation of tens of thousands of Ukrainians has run its course,” says an Irish Government source. “When we took these people in we thought it would be for a few months, just enough time for us to look good, and the war against Putin to be won; and then they’d all go back. Well, wouldn’t you know it, the damn war is going on and on and on, and the bill for the refugees has gone up and and up and up. And then we discover that so many of the people we’re sheltering are of fighting age. Draft dodgers. Here we are supporting Ukraine in its hour of need and at the same time depriving it of the very resource it needs to fight its war. It’s immoral. Hypocritical. Not to mention all the trouble it’s caused with all the riots and bad blood around the country. And then there’s the possibility that, if we continue to give asylum to Ukrainians of fighting age, how long will it be before Moscow decides to launch a pre-emptive strike on, say, Coolock, or Offaly, to knock them out? Think about that. Taoiseach Harris knows his first duty to the country is to protect it. And its neutrality. We’re already virtually at war with Israel, we just can’t fight a two-front war, with Russia as well. So if the boss whispered into President Zelenskyy’s ear that there was a plan to encourage Ukrainians in Ireland to do their duty, who could fault that?”