'I can help them': one man's journey from Portland to Ukraine's frontlines

[Nevilledog]

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Tweet text:

Sergio Olmos
@MrOlmos
Sergey Korenev is running out of time.

His mother is alone outside of Kyiv, and the Russians are closing in on her neighborhood.

He’s on his way to find her, and get her out of the country.

Then he’s joining the war “They are my brothers in arms”

theguardian.com
‘I can help them’: one man’s journey from Portland to Ukraine’s frontlines
Sergey Korenev is one of about 66,000 Ukrainians returning home ‘to help my friends, they are my brothers in arms’
9:26 AM · Mar 8, 2022

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/08/portland-to-ukraine-frontlines-russia-invasion

No paywall
https://archive.ph/6RAkL


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 will board in a few hours that will begin a long journey to the war in Ukraine. Sergey still has to pack, but he doesn’t hurry her.

Sergey, 44, has been bringing Anna here to the park for a month and each time she gets better. He watched her roll down a small hill towards him. “Come on, come on, come on …” Sergey said in Russian, smiling at the progress she’s making.

Sergey’s eldest daughter Maria, 17, was standing next to him with her hoodie pulled up. She doesn’t look at her phone, even when Anna walks back up the hill and it turns quiet between her and her father. Sergey’s mother is alone in her home outside Kyiv, hiding from shelling. Sergey wants to go home to rescue her, take her to Poland and then stay and fight.

Since the start of the Russian buildup Sergey has 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 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.”

*snip*

[Wingus Dingus]

1. So many lives upended, because of one psychopath.

[3catwoman3]

2. I've said the same thing about Trump. The similarities...

...between these two is horrifying.