Ukrainian refugee family finds a welcoming home in Sonoma County

Until the Russian war against Ukraine began, Iryna Kulyk lived in Chernihiv in northern Ukraine. Her home is now in ruins and her husband is serving with a civil defense force as the conflict nears its seventh month.

Kulyk now lives in Rohnert Park, with her two daughters, ages 8 and 13, and her mother-in-law, 61, thanks to her sponsor, John Namkung, a Sebastopol man she took a chance on.

Despite the circumstances, she is filled with gratitude to have escaped with their lives, and start new ones in Sonoma County. She’s also grateful to the local community, for greeting her with open arms and offering support, and especially to Namkung and his wife, Dianne Namkung, who flew to Poland to bring Kulyk’s dog, Fara, to the U.S.

Feb. 24: ‘Leave now’

The day Russia invaded Ukraine was “a normal day,” Kulyk said in Russian through an interpreter as she sat at a donated wooden table, across from a Press Democrat reporter in her new Rohnert Park home.

“I woke up early as always,” she said. The mother of two worked as an office manager and her husband, Andriy Stetsenko, owned a general contracting business.

Three copies of their passports lay on the table that morning.

The day before, Stetsenko had insisted she make the copies in case Russia invaded, though Kulyk hadn’t believed it would actually happen.

She checked her phone the morning of Feb. 24 to find a swarm of messages and missed calls from her boss. She called him back and he told her the invasion had started and they needed to pack their bags.

“Leave now,” he told her.

“Then we heard the sirens and the panic and everyone rushed to the store,” Kulyk said, her eyes wide. “I realized that I hadn't been preparing. I didn't go to the store. I didn't have any extra supplies.”

She rushed to a small grocery store next door. By the time she got there, a huge line had formed and the store had been stripped to the bare minimum.

They spent the next few days going back and forth between their apartment and a bomb shelter underneath a nearby hospital.

The city became a war zone and they tried to flee three times, unsuccessfully because authorities said it was not safe.

On their fourth try, a group of volunteers arranged an escape from the city supervised by military personnel.

They joined a long line of cars and buses fleeing the area. While crossing certain district lines, they heard the Russian army shooting at some of the cars and they witnessed people burning alive in their cars.

“It was terrifying and the kids were scared of course,” Kulyk said.

A Sebastopol volunteer

Once the family of four crossed the border into Poland, they arrived at an enormous humanitarian aid center and were swept into a sea of refugees.

“And that's when I met John and it was fate,” Kulyk said.

Namkung, 74, and his wife live in the Lone Pine Village neighborhood on the south end of Sebastopol.

On March 29, he was at the Medyka crossing at the Polish and Ukrainian border.

Namkung had traveled there to help transport the refugees. He had gone on previous humanitarian aid trips to Greece in 2016 to assist Syrian refugees and in 2019 to teach English to displaced Yazidis. This trip he funded with his own money and with help from those who had donated to his GoFundMe campaign.

At the refugee center that day he told the reception center that he could drive four people in his rental car to Krakow, Poland.

“They announced it over the loud speaker and I turned around and there was her family right there,” he said. “I was pleased to see three generations of females, the grandmother, Kulyk and the two girls.”

“And they even had a little dog,” he said, which proved to become quite a challenge later.

On April 21, President Joe Biden announced the Uniting for Ukraine program, a chance for 10,000 Ukrainians to seek refuge from the war in the U.S. under the guidance of American sponsors. Namkung decided to apply and was granted permission.

He remembered Kulyk and her sweet family, the only Ukrainians he had gotten contact information from during his time in Poland.

When Namkung reached out to Kulyk on Facebook, she was cautious, having heard stories of Ukrainian refugees falling prey to trafficking schemes.

“But I had met him personally and I had a good feeling about him,” she said. “I just said, I have to trust my gut and go take this chance.”

They were set to fly from Frankfurt, Germany, to Dublin, Ireland, to go through U.S. Customs and Border Protection. But a week before their trip, Ireland announced they wouldn’t allow dogs into the country because of a recent rabies outbreak. It would take six months for the family to obtain a special permit for their feisty brown and black miniature pinscher to accompany them.

“So we had to come up with a plan,” Namkung said.

Ultimately, Dianne Namkung flew out to Frankfurt to bring the dog to the U.S.

“I was amazed by all the effort in your insistence, being consistent, and all that went through this process,” Kulyk said to John in English. “It was just really amazing to see how much effort he put in there ― for the people who you don't know at all,” and our “really wild and crazy” dog, she said laughing, almost simultaneously triggering the dog to start barking during an interview.

It ended up taking another three failed attempts due to missed flights when their customs paperwork took too long to review, as well as a plane mechanical failure in Dublin.

They struck luck on the fourth try.

“Finally, finally they made it on Aug. 11 after all this very, very hellish time that they had trying to leave Europe,” Namkung said.

Life in Sonoma County

Once the Ukrainian family arrived to Sonoma County, Kulyk was so exhausted she doesn’t remember much.

What she does remember, though, is stepping off the plane to find a small group of people greeting them with Ukrainian flags, sunflowers and balloons. They were part of a group of Namkung’s friends and neighbors who call themselves the Lone Pine Ukrainian Aid program, which help support the family with their rent, utilities, food, health care, transportation, clothing and education.

“We just thought ‘oh my gosh, this is for us?’ And we were just in awe with how people met us there, and just all the way in the U.S., we met just so many helpful people,” Kulyk said.

Namkung and the Lone Pine group are continuing to raise funds for the family, with a special concert Sept. 24, in partnership with a group called Hromada-Laub Ukraine Charity Concerts.

For now, Kulyk and her mother-in-law are working on becoming fully independent by applying for jobs. Kulyk is taking English classes at Santa Rosa Junior College and Namkung is giving her driving lessons (every morning and afternoon, volunteers help pick up and drop off her kids from school).

The biggest adjustment so far has been getting used to the American school system, Kulyk said.

Her 8-year-old daughter, Myrosalava Stetsenko, is attending Marguerite Hahn Elementary and her 13-year-old, Kira Stetsenko, is attending Lawrence E. Jones Middle School.

Kulyk said she’s not used to the kids having individual schedules and going to different classrooms. In Ukraine the students are in one building with one class.

“I’m very grateful for the opportunity to just live for the children to have this opportunity of a future,” she said. “I realize how much effort has been put in time by other people have put in, and John's family, his wife and I am very grateful.”

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