PETER Kyle has slammed “bureaucratic barriers” preventing Ukrainian refugees from coming to the UK.

The MP for Hove, who served as an aid worker in the Balkans before entering politics, said on a panel of BBC’s Question Time thatthere needs to be a system giving emergency protection to allow those in need to come to Britain.

Mr Kyle said: “You can have a system that is as quick as not having any visa at all. Ukrainians have biometric ID systems and passports, so this could be done in a heartbeat.

“You could have people coming in and you can do the checks straightaway in seconds to enable people to come in and settle in this country, usually with friends and family.

“What we don’t do is put bureaucratic barriers to them coming.”

Mr Kyle also criticised successive government cuts to the armed forces and said: “We have to understand the impact that 12 years of Tory government has had on our armed services. We now have fewer ships, fewer sailors and fewer soldiers than this country has had for 300 years.”

He called on the government to ensure they sanction more oligarchs with connections to Putin and that those sanctions must be implemented swiftly.

Mr Kyle said: “Vladimir Putin is a gangster, he surrounds himself with gangsters, and they have come to our country - mostly to London, and they have invested in London because they believe we are corrupt enough to host them.

“We need to make sure we take them on one by one and we do so decisively.”

However, comedian and commentator Konstantin Kisin criticised My Kyle for playing “party politics” at a time when people are talking about the potential outbreak of World War III.

Mr Kisin, who is from Russia originally, said that he felt “nothing but shame for my country”.

However, he said there is nothing that Western countries do to support Ukraine’s fight against Russia directly.

He said: “NATO cannot get involved in this because that would start World War III, which would lead to the annihilation of all of us. Of course, we can keep supplying ammunition and weapons but this is a fight the Ukrainians have to win themselves.”

Over one million Ukrainians have fled the country since the start of the Russian invasion began last week, according to the United Nations.