“Everyone is very nervous, distraught and gravely concerned.”
Kateryna Mamyko-Golomb is grateful that her mother already had arrived from Kyiv, the Ukraine capital, earlier this month for what was supposed to be a short visit. But she’s terrified for her stepfather and grandparents, who are still in Ukraine and who woke before dawn Thursday to learn that their country was under attack by Russia.
Her stepfather, a veteran of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, contemplated staying put and fighting, with reports that Russian special forces and airborne troops were closing in on the capital. Mamyko-Golomb said she can understand her stepfather’s desire to stay and fight but added, “I said, ‘I want you to pack and get ready to go.’ ” She said he’s since gone to another part of the embattled country to look after her elderly grandparents.
The UACC helped organize a protest at San Francisco’s City Hall that drew a couple hundred people late Thursday afternoon. Demonstrators waved blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags and carried signs with phrases such as “Russia is an occupant” and “Stop Russian bloodshed in Ukraine.” “It’s not easy to evacuate,” she said. “There’s traffic and it’s unsafe to go somewhere besides your home right now because you don’t know where it is currently safe.”
Golomb said some of his family and friends unfortunately were in denial that Putin would ever execute his war plans, even up until three weeks ago when he was visiting his homeland for a friend’s birthday. Mamyko-Golomb said her mother won't return to Ukraine as scheduled Saturday but must stay and probably will apply for refugee status. That means her mother has left behind her apartment, her job, “her life and a lot of stories and memories.” But more distressing, she said, is the family has no idea how they will get her grandparents out. Her stepfather, meanwhile, may have to stay indefinitely.
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