The UK’s home secretary has renewed her defence of the decision not to waive security checks of people fleeing Ukraine, saying the UK has to “remain watchful.” The UK on Friday opened its “Homes for Ukraine” scheme, allowing willing applicants to sponsor people fleeing the war in Ukraine and provide them with a home. Speaking at the Conservative Party’s spring conference in Blackpool on Saturday, Secretary of State for the Home Department Priti Patel said the British people “will open our homes and our hearts to Ukrainians,” but security could not be compromised. “Times of conflict, my friends, emphasises our need to remain watchful,” she said. “I know from the briefings I receive from the intelligence and security services that instability around the world brings with it greater threats.” Citing the 2018 poisoning of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the English town of Salisbury—”whose inhabitants would have felt completely …