Sonoma County residents from Ukraine worry over family in an imperiled nation

Every day, Olga Komar calls her parents in Berdychiv, Ukraine, a city two hours from the capital, Kyiv. Over the phone, they tell her things back home are normal ― there are no troops on the streets, no shortage of goods and no disruption in their busy daily schedules.

But as global fears and diplomatic tensions rise over the possibility that Russia might invade Ukraine, and despite her parent’s optimism, Komar is scared.

Komar, 36, is not the only worried Ukrainian-born local. According to 2019 voter registration data, there are over 100 Ukrainian-born people living in Sonoma County. Many grew up living under a Russian threat that has long clouded their home country’s sovereignty.

Many still have family and friends in the Ukraine, a nation of 41 million people — about 2 million more than live in California.

Nataliya Vorobets, 42, who runs a family dentistry in Sebastopol, is clinging to hope that everything will be OK.

But her fears grow as news breaks of Russia amassing an estimated 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border and with President Biden’s announcement Wednesday that he was deploying 3,000 troops to Eastern Europe.

Those fears are familiar, she said. She grew up in Ukraine and attended dentistry school until she was 26, before moving to Michigan.

For nearly a decade, Ukraine has been dealing with major Russian threats to its independence. By May 2021, more than 14,000 people had been killed in the ongoing and prolonged Russo-Ukrainian War that began in 2014 with Russia’s invasion and takeover of Crimean Peninsula.

Vorobets’s family lives in Ivano-Frankivsk, a city in western Ukraine, a region many Ukrainians moved to because it’s considered much safer than the bombed ruins of eastern Ukraine, which borders Russia.

Vorobets, who moved to the United States in 2006, relocated to Los Angeles in 2014. She landed in Sonoma County five years ago because she loved the way the North Bay’s lush, natural environment reminded her of home.

She calls her parents every several days to check in. She said many of her patients have been asking about what’s going on.

“What can I tell you?” she said her dad told her. “It’s 7 o’clock. We’re getting ready for work. I’m making coffee. On the TV they show news about this. We’re scared, but we keep living.”

A few days ago, during dinner, her cousin received information from the city about bomb shelter locations.

When she heard about Russia bolstering its mobile blood supplies along the Ukrainian border, she realized, “They’re really getting ready for this and it’s going to be real,” Vorobets said.

For Ukraine, it’s a combination of geopolitical bad luck and a long, troubled history that the country finds itself ever more under Russia’s shadow. Much of that has to do with iron-grip rule of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a fierce foe of NATO’s expansion into former Soviet bloc countries, including Ukraine.

In Putin, however, Vorobets also sees a leader bent on opportunistic imperialism, and she has no doubt Putin would stop at nothing to gain control over Kyiv, and over the eastern half of Europe ― Russia’s invasions of Georgia and Crimea having already set a precedent.

Many Ukrainians hope that NATO and the United States will step in, but she feels they are not taking enough serious action. That is alarming, because generations of Ukrainians have now been told to rely on NATO support and defense.

“We are definitely strong people, willing to fight for independence, identity and culture” Vorobets said. “We don’t want war. We just want (Russia) to leave us alone and let us move on.”

“We always have hope,” she said. “Hope will stay no matter what … but personally, I’m scared.”

Vorobets invited her parents, both pediatricians, to come stay with her or her sister in the United States.

But they have established lives in Ukraine, with jobs at hospitals and rooted pride in their nationality. They want to stand behind their country, she said.

“They said we need to go be with our people,” she added. “They said we’re afraid and everything, but life continues.”

Komar, who grew up in Ukraine and moved to the U.S. when she was 24, now works as an attorney in Sonoma.

On at least five occasions, she has invited her parents to stay with her until the conflict is resolved.

“And they politely refused and they told me that they feel absolutely safe living in Ukraine,” Komar said.

“I pray that every day nothing happens,” Komar said. “Ukrainian people are so amazing. They deserve the best. They deserve dignity for life.”

You can reach Staff Writer Alana Minkler at 707-526-8511 or alana.minkler@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @alana_minkler.