Sergey Korenev was running out of time. He watched his daughter, Anna, 11, practice skateboarding in a park on a rainy Thursday night outside Portland, Oregon.
His midnight flight was to board in a few hours, beginning a long journey to the war in Ukraine. Korenev still had to pack, but he did not hurry her.
Korenev, 44, had been bringing Anna to the park for a month, and each time she got better. He watched her roll down a small hill toward him.
“Come on, come on, come on,” Korenev said in Russian, smiling at the progress she was making.
Korenev’s eldest daughter, Maria, 17, was standing next to him with her hoodie pulled up.
She did not look at her smartphone, even when Anna walked back up the hill, and it turned quiet between her and her father.
Korenev’s mother was alone in her home outside Kyiv, hiding from shelling. Korenev wanted to go home to rescue her, take her to Poland, and then stay and fight.
Since the start of the Russian buildup, Korenev had been fixated on news, worried. On the night of the invasion, Valentina Korenev, his ex-wife, texted him.
He had already made his decision: He was going back to Ukraine.
“I’ve been monitoring the situation since last fall, like everybody,” Sergey Korenev said through a translator, his brother Alex Korenev. “But when it became a total invasion, I felt like I needed to do something. I could not watch it from afar.”
Sergey Korenev is one of about 66,000 Ukrainians returning home to help fight the Russian invasion following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s call for Ukrainians abroad return to the homeland to fight the Russians. Sergey Korenev, whose family is Jewish, was one Ukrainian in the US answering the call.
Later that Thursday night in his apartment in Vancouver, Washington, Sergey Korenev laid his gear on a sofa. Laptop, headphones, gloves, new boots he still had to break in, a bag of insulin for his type 2 diabetes. He was trying to get familiar with where all the pockets were in his new military-style backpack.
He did not carry much, but he took care of what he did have.
His Ukrainian passport was not bent or worn. Only the stamps inside it gave away how much it had seen. He folded a scarf of the Dynamo Kyiv soccer club into his bag. He opened a pouch with keys to his mother’s home in Kyiv, checking to see if they were still there.
He zipped up the pouch and placed it in his bag.
“A lot of my friends are volunteers in the territorial defense force. I can help them, because I know them, I told them I can bring what you need when you need it. So I’ve gotten a list of supplies of what they need,” he said.
Sergey Korenev stuck a small Ukrainian national flag on the outside of the backpack. On a shelf obscured by a small television was a framed award, which he was not packing, from the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces recognizing him for his work with veterans.
“He is a huge patriot of Ukraine,” said Alex Korenev, who has lived in Vancouver for 11 years. “He’s going there because he feels that his country is under assault and wants to help his brothers in arms.”
Alex Korenev said his brother felt the need to help in some way after he saw his friends being killed in the Maiden revolution in 2013.
When fighting broke out in the eastern region of Donetsk in 2014, Sergey Korenev and his then-wife, an interior designer, started a foundation to help those fighting. They lobbied companies to donate construction materials that they could use to fix apartments.
If a father or a son was killed in action, leaving behind a family with a roof to replace and plumbing to fix, they would do it for free. If a veteran returned from the war without meaning and purpose, with just a hammer or a paint brush, Sergey and Valentina Korenev would find them one.
They even helped the nascent Ukrainian military, as at the time a special forces unit was relocated to barracks with bare walls.
“They made it livable with windows, doors, put floor in, paint it, and put some chairs and furniture,” Alex Korenev said.
However, by migrating to the US, Sergey and Valentina Korenev had been trying to give their daughters a shot at a better life and more opportunities.
“They wanted to try a better life, they have two young daughters and they thought it’s gonna be good for them to grow here and get good education,” Alex Korenev said. “They just won the lottery green card; if you win the lottery you use it.”
Sergey Korenev has been embracing life in the Pacific Northwest.
“He’s been exploring the craft beer landscape, he’s been buying every time something new, a couple of cans and making photos and archiving it all,” Alex Korenev said.
Sergey Korenev speaks Russian at home and was still learning English. He had taken gig economy jobs that let him work while still learning the language, driving for Uber and Doordash.
“Since he’s been doing Door Dash, he’s been exposed to a lot of different cuisine. For example, he’s been taking Mediterranean stuff home, Chick-fil-A and a lot of pizza,” Alex Korenev said.
Sergey Korenev left his new home in the US on a mission with three objectives.
First, he took US$9,000 in donations from the Ukrainian community in Oregon. He flew to New York to pick up some more donations from friends in the Ukrainian community there. Then he flew to Warsaw to cross the border over land.
His second objective was to get to Kyiv as fast as possible to find his mother and get her to safety. He hoped to get her out of the country.
His final objective was to help win a war.
“I’m going there to help my friends, they are my brothers in arms,” Sergey Korenev said.
One of his final acts with his family was to drop off his Mercedes at his ex-wife’s home and to say goodbye.
Valentina Korenev had a gift waiting for him: a new pair of boots.
He was surprised. He tried them on, and went to his bag and gave Maria the receipt for his other pair, with instructions to return them and keep the money.
His ex-wife was scared for him, but supported his decision.
“I think it’s the right thing to do,” Valentina Korenev said. “I and our children are very worried, of course, but I agreed to help in any way I can. If I need to come, I will come to Ukraine, but for now, I can do more good from here.”
Near midnight, at Portland International Airport, Sergey Korenev walked with his daughters and brother toward security.
He took out the US dollars in his wallet and handed them to Anna to keep. He set his bag down and picked Anna up, holding her in the air.
A couple tried to get past Sergey Korenev’s group and stopped.
One of them pointed to the Ukrainian flag sticking out of his bag, aware of what was happening, and they backed away for a moment to watch Sergey Korenev say goodbye to his family.
Maria held her younger sister, after their father had left, letting her cry in her arms.
Asked about how she felt about her father leaving to join the war effort, Maria had a simple answer: “Scared? No, I’m proud.”
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