SAN FRANCISCO — Hundreds of protesters descended on Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco Thursday to loudly condemn the Russian war on Ukraine, including a number of Ukrainians showing support for their countrymen and anger at Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Upset, worried, troubled. We still have family out there,” said Paulina Fayer, originally from Odessa. “Extended family out there, mostly in Odessa. We have friends in Kiev, but they’re everywhere now.”

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Her father, Leon, didn’t sleep at all last night. He had called distant relatives two weeks ago and told them to come to California just in case. They refused.

“Nobody can understand, even over there what is going on, you know?” said Leon Fayerbuerg. “Nobody expected anything could happen something like this between Russia and Ukraine. They’ve always been neighbors.”

Maksym Zubkob was watching Putin’s speech last night and immediately called his family in Odessa when he heard the words “military action.”

“So, I stopped watching the video right away and I called my family,” Zubkob said. “It was around 5 am there and I told them that war is coming – so can you please be awake? Make sure that you have a phone connection because I was really worried that I wouldn’t be able to contact them.”

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It wasn’t just Ukrainians but Russians who showed up at Civic Center to protest the invasion.

“It’s obviously the wrong thing to do,” said Ilya Razenshtyan. “I don’t believe that many Russians actually support it. It obviously shouldn’t have happened.”

Just Answers CEO Andy Kurtzig has more than 270 employees in Ukraine. His company has spent weeks buying satellite phones and new ISPs — as well as moving people and their families from the east of Ukraine to the west near the Polish border — in the hopes of keeping them safe.

“Their lives are in danger right now,” Kurtzig said.

Kurtzig’s head of global operations lives a kilometer away from the airport in Lviv.

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“She lives in a two-story home near the airport, they’re staying off the second story,” he said. “They’ve taken the bathroom and they’ve boarded up the walls and they are basically barricading themselves in and that’s their safe space in case the sirens come back on again.”

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