GORHAM – Dean Street of Gorham stays in close contact with friends in Ukraine since political protests erupted last fall in the country where he once lived, studied, taught English and was shadowed by Soviet KGB agents.

And a Gorham couple now in Ukraine reported Tuesday with news of quiet in their location.

Ukraine gained its independence in 1991 after the Soviet regime’s collapse. Political upheaval began in November of last year with protests against the Ukrainian government led by a pro-Russian president, who fled last month. Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 1 ordered a military occupation of the Crimea, a southern part of Ukraine bordering the Black Sea.

Now, with Ukraine gripped in an international crisis with Russian-ordered troops on its soil, Street said last week he regularly communicates via Skype with a Ukrainian pastor friend.

“The churches are fervently praying and fasting,” Street said. “Families with children are reluctant to go to church.”

Street’s several years in Ukraine began as an exchange student when the country was part of the former Soviet Union.

A former U.S. Air Force linguist who speaks Russian, Street had once monitored Russia.

“No one could have predicted that Putin would do this,” Street, a charter plane pilot in Maine, said last week. “Putin seems to be unpredictable.”

Street described the Crimea as a popular vacation area for Russian people. Russia borders Ukraine, and Street said Russia has a fleet on the Black Sea.

The U.S. State Department on March 7 renewed its travel warning that U.S. citizens “defer all non-essential travel to Ukraine and particularly the Crimean peninsula.”

The department said the potential remains for violence between political parties.

Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted last month and an interim government organized.

The state department said, “Groups that oppose the new government and support closer ties with Russia have staged demonstrations in cities throughout eastern and southern Ukraine.”

Undeterred by political turmoil, Street is planning to visit friends in Ukraine in a few months.

Meanwhile a Gorham man and his wife, who was born in Russia, left on March 4 to visit Ukraine.

Dwayne St. Ours, who was in the capital city of Kiev recently, said on Tuesday protesters were still camping out, but the scene is less volatile than in the eastern part of the country or the Crimea.

“It’s completely quiet here,” Dwayne St. Ours said by telephone from Ukraine on Tuesday.

St. Ours and his wife, Irina St. Ours, are members of the First Russian Baptist Church in Gorham and have friends in Ukraine. Irina St. Ours has an aunt there. The couple plans to be home in Gorham within about two weeks.

Quiet is in contrast with recent weeks when Kiev was embroiled in unrest. The government’s use of force in an attempt to quell protests led to “all-out pitched battles, scores of deaths, international condemnation and the president’s abrupt ouster,” according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s website.

Street said last week his friends in Ukraine don’t know what to expect.

During a visit to Siberia in November, the Rev. Jonathan Marshall, pastor of the White Rock Free Baptist Church in Gorham, where Street attends services, met a pastor from Ukraine.

“Our congregation is praying for the situation in Ukraine. Our prayers are that God would protect our Christian brothers and sisters from harm, that they would be able to meet together for worship and fellowship,” said Marshall. “We are also praying that God would put it in the hearts of leaders in both Russia and Ukraine to do what is right and pleasing to God.”

During his Ukraine visit, St. Ours said he wouldn’t discuss politics, and Street said a pastor friend in Kharkiv, Ukraine, is “careful not to make political statements” when Street contacts him.

Street’s pastor friend, whom he identified only as Ivan, speaks Russian and lives in Kharkiv, a pro-Russian area in eastern Ukraine near the Russian border. Demonstrators there favored Russia and had raised the Russian flag recently, Street said last week.

As an Air Force linguist in the 1980s, “I flew reconnaissance missions against the Soviet Union,” Street said.

Later, when he had plans as a student to go to the Ukraine, then under Soviet control, the FBI warned him about traveling to the Soviet Union. But, he went.

People were assigned from the KGB to watch him, Street said. He went there as an exchange student in a program at the University of Southern Maine. He attended Kharkiv State University and lived there seven years, from 1989-1996.

In Ukraine, Street worked as an English teacher and as a missionary helping to develop Christian churches. Street has eight children, including two stepchildren. Two daughters were born in Ukraine, he said.

Street is still planning to visit Ukraine in coming months, despite the unpredictable situation.

“It is hard to know for certain what is actually taking place in Ukraine; but God knows, and we are trusting Him for a good outcome,” Marshall said.

St. Ours and his wife, too, are praying for peace in the Ukraine and for its people.

“We love them,” St. Ours said. “We want the best for them.”

Dean Street of Gorham stays in touch with friends in Ukraine, which has been rocked by political upheaval and military occupation. Dwayne St. Ours of Gorham visits Maidan Square in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.