The Ukrainian community in the Bay Area fear for their friends and family back in their homeland.
Dmitry Lipkin was born and raised in Ukraine and has been sleepless and emotional watching the invasion.
“It's devastating,” he said. “It’s really hard to believe and imagine in today’s day and age, in the 21st Century, 2022, something like this could happen. And it’s happening live.”
He and his parents left Ukraine when it was under Soviet rule and fear for the people there fleeing today.
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His parents now live in Menlo Park and are stunned that Putin is invading.
“Just in disbelief from what I saw on the television yesterday, I just couldn’t grasp reality,” said Alla Lipkin.
The family eventually moved to the Bay Area and worked hard to achieve their American and Silicon Valley dream.
“Parents are both well educated, my mom was a concert pianist with a master’s in music. Dad has a master’s in engineering, and they were both cleaning bathrooms, working at McDonald’s, dad was a janitor in an office building. Then finally got his break,” said Dmitry.
His dad would become a CEO of a publicly-traded company.
Dmitry, who also advises a number of Silicon Valley companies, said they too are watching closely because many of their engineers live there and worry about what’ll happen to them.
“All of those resources are going to get, in some way shape or form, impacted. Whether, God forbid, they lose lives. They lose a home. They don’t even have anywhere to plug in a computer to even do the work they’re usually accustomed to doing,” said Dmitry. “That’s going to have an impact, because first and foremost you have to take care of your family, take care of your livelihood, and your well-being, of safety.”
The Lipkin family, now thinking of their friends in Ukraine, hope that somehow it’ll end soon.
“It's not a war,” said Dmitry. “War is when two sides are fighting equally, with equal things in play and at stake. This is an invasion. This is very very sad.”
