Mike Stearns (left) chats with Andrian Budantsov and Denys Zhadanov of Ukraine during Macworld last month in San Francisco. Photo: Codi Mills, The Chronicle | Buy this photo
"Being a kid in the early '80s, it would have been both a challenging and frightening experience to talk to a U.S. person, because of the Cold War and all the history," he said.
Today, Akhanov is Russia's point man in Silicon Valley, a striking example of how investment, not ideology, governs the relationship between the two historic rivals. As president and CEO of Menlo Park's Rusnano USA, Akhanov oversees the U.S. unit of a Russian government-owned nanotechnology fund that has invested about $1.2 billion in the last three years in American companies.
"When you do business with someone, you tend to trust them, otherwise you will not be doing business with them," Akhanov said. In the post-Soviet era, younger generations have been weaned on the Internet and social media. "You know people personally," he said. "You meet them, and you see them from a different viewpoint."
Testing relationships
However, Russia's decision to annex Crimea and mass troops on Ukraine's eastern border is testing those relationships.
"We know how to work when we're in different parts of the world," said Ukrainian entrepreneur Yaroslav Azhnyuk, the 25-year-old CEO of a San Francisco startup called Petcube. "Even if something horrible happens, we'll just move to Europe, or wherever, and continue working from there."
Petcube, which is developing a device that lets people watch their pets through a mobile phone app, operates a development office in Kiev.
In some ways, the growing economic ties between America and Russia could make a potential conflict even messier. Silicon Valley depends a good deal on Russian money and Ukrainian engineers to power its startups, while tech giants Cisco Systems and Google have made major investments in the former Soviet Union.
Russia is already pulling money out of Ukraine. Russian investment in Ukrainian startups has nearly stopped because of government propaganda, said Vitaly Golomb, a Bay Area entrepreneur and investor.
'Big divide'
"There is now a big divide between Ukraine and Russia," said Golomb, a native of Ukraine who immigrated to the United States as a child. "The attitude of Russians toward Ukrainians is condescending, which is disturbing to watch."
Tensions that began in November with antigovernment protests in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev and suddenly escalated with Russia's annexation of Crimea have prompted fears in the West that Moscow will invade eastern Ukraine and perhaps the strategic Black Sea region.
Much has changed since the peak of the Cold War in the 1980s. Entrepreneurship - once considered a crime in the old Soviet Union - has blossomed over the past decade. Russia is more integrated into a global economy, thanks in no small part to the Internet.
For example, Russian Internet entrepreneur Yuri Milner was an early investor in companies including Facebook and Zynga. And San Jose networking equipment maker Cisco has offices in both Kiev and Moscow. The company has said that it will spend $1 billion on investments in Russia.
And in 2012, Ukraine's burgeoning startup scene received a big boost when Mountain View's Google bought facial-recognition firm Viewdle for a reported $30 million to $45 million.
In the Cold War era, a similar crisis could affect the shipment of physical goods such as oil or wheat. But in the Internet age, those goods are intellectual property and computer programs that can be distributed electronically.
Kiev conference
The Crimean crisis certainly didn't deter Golomb, CEO of San Mateo e-commerce printing company Keen Systems. Golomb organized a conference for startups in Kiev in December, just weeks after street protests started. He also recently opened an engineering office in Ukraine and hired seven programmers.
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