In a war-torn country, a man has died who split his time between the St. Louis area and Ukraine to help organize the adoption of children with medical needs.
Associated Press
March 5, 2022, 5:11 pm
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ST. LOUIS. A man who divided his time between the St. Louis area and Ukraine, helping to organize the adoption of children with medical needs, died during the fighting in the war-torn country.
Newspaper The Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Serge Zevlever was killed on Feb. 26 when he volunteered to control a riot near a Kiev bomb shelter, his daughters said. This was just two days after Russian troops launched their invasion of Ukraine.
“He wasn’t in the fight, he wasn’t on the front lines,” his eldest daughter Alice Sander said. “He went outside to see if it was safe for everyone else.”
A US State Department spokesman confirmed the death of a US citizen during the conflict that day, without naming Zevlever, and expressed his condolences to his family.
Zevlever fled Ukraine years before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and eventually became a US citizen.
“His mother wanted him to get out and find a better, free life for his family,” said his youngest daughter, Nicole Zevlever.
Zevlever told Post-Dispatch in a 1999 interview about his work dealing with difficult demands from orphanages and local governments.
“My job,” he said, “is to take care of my parents while they are abroad.”