Ukrainian crisis hitting close to home (w/video)

Some Bay Area Ukrainians protested in front of the Russian consulate in San Francisco over the weekend, urging the U.S. and the rest of the world to intervene to defuse the regional tension.

The dispute threatens to further divide Ukraine geographically. The western part of the country predominantly speaks Ukrainian while the east has mostly Russian speakers.

The North Coast has many historical and contemporary bonds to Ukraine and Russia. In the early 1800s, Russians settled on the North Coast, established Ft. Ross and named many geographic features such as Mount St. Helena. The town of Sebastopol was named after the Crimean city of Sevastopol.

Santa Rosa's sister city in Ukraine, Cherkasy, is just a few hours south of Kiev and has experienced some of the same unrest as the capital, said Fred Ptucha, the Santa Rosa resident who established the sister-city relationship in 1990. Santa Rosa has hosted many Ukrainian delegations over the years, and a number of Sonoma County residents have set up nonprofits in Ukraine.

Sonoma's sister city, Kaniv, is not far from Cherkasy, while Sebastopol has been sister cities with Chyhyryn, Ukraine since 1992.

Sebastopol native Steven Pifer maintains many connections with Ukraine. The Analy High School grad served as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine under president Bill Clinton. Now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, he has been in high demand recently providing expert advice to policy makers and media outlets.

Pifer said he met the now-deposed president Yanukovych several times on his visits to the country and described him as "a thug." But, he said, he supported Yanukovych after he was democratically elected in 2010.

"I was in the camp that said, 'forget his history, let's give him a chance,'" Pifer said. "Unfortunately, what we saw was disappointing. He's thuggish and he makes mistakes."

Pifer said Yanukovych should have signed the pact forging closer ties with Europe, and he should not have used force against protesters in Kiev. He said it was no surprise that Russia sent troops to the Crimea region of Ukraine to destabilize the new government.

The U.S. and other countries should use diplomatic and economic measures to check Russian aggression in the region, he said, including expelling Russia from the G-8, canceling trade agreements with Russia and freezing some Russian assets.

"The options are small, but will have impacts," he said. "It sends a message that, unless you cease and desist, the measures will start to go into effect."

With Russian troops on the ground in Ukraine, many Sonoma County residents from Ukraine worried about the safety of family members back home.

Yaroslav Kolosovskiy, 28, a Santa Rosa student, said his aunt, uncle and cousins live in the besieged Crimea region.

"They don't know what will happen to them," he said. "There are a lot of troops there that weren't there before. It would be nice to have the country back to its independent state and have foreign troops out of the country."

Dmitriy Labunskiy, a physics tutor who came to Santa Rosa from Ukraine 10 years ago, said the Russian soldiers are protecting Russian minorities in Ukraine who would be otherwise vulnerable under the new nationalistic government.

"I don't like (Russian president Vladimir) Putin," he said. "He's very brutal, harsh, old Soviet school thinking. But in the case of Ukraine, I think he did all that he had to do. Otherwise, it would be a massacre of Russians."

Amid the turmoil, Ukrainians have tried to leave the country for opportunities in the U.S. and Canada, and a Healdsburg job search firm has helped a dozen Ukrainians find work, according to HireHero founder Davis Jones.

"They are seeking a better, more stable life," he said. "From talking to them, I get the feeling that it is not good in Ukraine. They say it feels like the mob is running the country, and they are sick of the corruption."

You can reach Staff Writer Matt Brown at 521-5206 or matt.brown@pressdemocrat.com.