‘It used to be my country’: Ukrainian-born Sonoma County residents in shock as Russia invades

Olga Komar’s brother, who lives just outside Kyiv, Ukraine, woke up around 5 a.m. there to the sounds of explosions and the feel of the ground shaking as Russian troops began invading his country.

At the same time, about 8 p.m. here, Komar, an attorney who lives in Kenwood, was sitting on her couch reading when her phone began blowing up with messages from friends and colleagues.

For the past month, she has grown accustomed to the flow of support. Her family lives in Berdychiv, Ukraine, a city two hours from the capital.

But this time the text notifications were nonstop. She pulled up the Ukrainian news on her phone and texted her brother, who confirmed it was true — Russia was invading Ukraine.

“Everything inside of me dropped immediately,” Komar said.

It was a common feeling Thursday among North Bay residents with ties to Ukraine, and there are many.

Voter registration information reveals more than 100 people who listed Ukrainian heritage, and three Sonoma County towns have sister cities in the Eastern European nation.

Also watching with dread were many Russian émigrés who left, in part, because they feared this sort of aggressive turn from President Vladimir Putin.

For all of them, Thursday was a day that seemed to last forever. They flooded themselves with news reports and disturbing images from television and internet, and did what they could to engage with loved ones back home — despite the tense situation there and a 10-hour time difference.

‘Disappearing from the map’

Komar was the one who broke the news to her parents in Ukraine.

They didn’t believe her at first, but just hours later, her parents felt the ground shake as a bomb landed a few miles from their home in Berdychiv.

Most Ukrainians for the past couple months have been doing their best to remain calm and continue to live their everyday lives, Komar said, including her parents. But now that’s impossible as Russian tanks move in from Ukraine’s northern, eastern and southern borders.

The whole world is witnessing what’s happening right now, said Komar. “And Ukraine is disappearing from the world map.”

“More could be done,” Komar added. She acknowledged the sanctions from NATO countries including the U.S., but said it doesn’t seem like enough to prevent Putin from occupying their country.

Komar’s aunt, who lives in Russia, called Komar’s parents Thursday. She said that protests have sprung up in every Russian town with police dispersing and arresting people.

“The people of Russia strongly disagree with the war,” Komar said. “They don't understand Putin. … They say, ‘Our ruler is out of control and we don't agree with his actions.’”

But no one is willing to stop him, Komar said.

That feeling of helplessness made Irene Goldenberg angry.

“It used to be my country,” Goldenberg said. “I spent my childhood, my younger years there. I have dear friends and they're endangered now.”

“And for what?” Goldenberg asked. “It is a shame. … Leaders are supposed to make life for people better, (but they) find a way to create suffering and now create wars.”

Goldenberg, now 77, moved to the United States from Ukraine in 1976. She was in her bedroom, listening to the radio while dusting her furniture early Thursday morning. Her heart sank when she heard of the Russian attack. She said her mind immediately tried to picture Russians and Ukrainians shooting at each other.

“I can’t imagine it because these are the same people,” Goldenberg said. “How are people going to shoot at each other? They’re like brothers and sisters to each other.”

Goldenberg and others pointed out the fact that Russians and Ukrainians are like family in many aspects. Marriages and friendships between the two country’s people are common. Their history, culture and language overlap.

In fact, shocked Russians turned out by the thousands Thursday to decry their country's invasion of Ukraine. More than 1,700 people in 53 Russian cities were detained, at least 940 of them in Moscow.

Sirens and explosions

Patricia Deignan, a retired Sebastopol resident, is also fixed on the news from Eastern Europe. Deignan was stationed in Ukraine as a Peace Corps member from 2017 to 2019 and hosted a Ukrainian exchange student several years ago.

While not Ukrainian herself, she has deep feelings for the country and its people.

“I never thought it would get this bad,” Deignan said, tearing up. “I don’t have much else to say. It’s just kind of unbelievable.”

As a member of Sebastopol World Friends, she hosted an exchange student at her house, Lisa, who is an 18-year-old college student in Kyiv. The moment she got word of last night’s news of a Russian attack, she texted Lisa.

Lisa texted her that she woke up to the sounds of sirens and explosions. She spent the rest of the day trying to get food and cash, which she was ultimately successful at, Deignan said.

Deignan has arranged for Lisa to stay in Ivano-Frankivsk, a city in western Ukraine, “but I don’t know what she’s going to do.”

Fred Ptucha has a lifelong interest in the region as well. But he views the geopolitical dynamics a little differently than most.

Ptucha, who is of Russian heritage, says he has studied the history of the region thoroughly, and believes this conflict has roots, in part, in NATO reneging on its promise not to expand eastward following the fall of the Soviet Union.

“What I’m saying is, this is not all good guys and bad guys,” Ptucha observed.

Not that Ptucha is hostile to Ukraine. Far from it. In 1989, he co-founded a sister city program that bonded Santa Rosa to Cherkasy, a city of similar size in the center of Ukraine. Sonoma County, Ptucha said, is the only county in America with three sister cities in Ukraine. Sebastopol is matched with Chihirin, the town of Sonoma with Kaniv.

The Santa Rosa-Cherkasy sisterhood has produced not only goodwill, Ptucha said, but 25 international marriages. One of them involved his co-founder, John Masura, who married a Ukrainian woman. As Ptucha, 78, watches Ukraine, he also looks for his friend.

“That’s where John is now,” he said. “I sent him an email, but I haven’t heard back.”

‘Like a cold shower’

Andriy Lesyshyn, who is 42 and lives in Cloverdale, said he held out hope that Putin was merely trying to gain leverage until Friday, when President Joe Biden announced his Russian counterpart had signaled an intent to attack.

“It was like a cold shower, but it prepared me mentally for this possibility,” Lesyshyn wrote in an email.

“Yet, I still reserved hope that this is just posturing,” he said. “The last 24 hours changed everything. I am now mustering all the will I have to resist being glued to the screen, but I still check up on news, of course.”

Lesyshyn, who grew up in the Lviv region of western Ukraine and later came to Sonoma County as an exchange student, has relatives in his hometown, and a niece in Kyiv. The niece was awakened by early-morning explosions Thursday and wound up evacuating the capital.

“In her text message to me from the train, she found irony that she and her friends, who are all recent students with low incomes, were finally able to stay in first class on the train,” Lesyshyn said. “Yet they were refugees in their own country.”

Lesyshyn looks at what’s happening in his homeland right now, and sees a pivot point in history.

“I can't help but wonder if this is what it was like for people around the world in 1939 when Nazi Germany began the Second World War,” Lesyshyn said. “The difficult choices and sacrifices that prior generations had to make has more meaning to me. I hope that we find the courage to defend our values today like we did then.”

Like Lesyshyn, Komar, the Kenwood attorney, is focused on getting people to safety. She believes it's probably too late to bring her parents and brother to seek refuge in the United States, but she’s holding onto hope the invasion will be short-lasting and Ukraine will hold onto its hard-fought independence.

“I just don’t know what tomorrow will bring,” Komar said, her voice quavering.

You can reach Staff Writer Alana Minkler at 707-526-8511 or alana.minkler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @alana_minkler. You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.