“Your court decree is invalid. Ruslan will not be able to leave the country for another 30 days.”
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Kelci Jagge stared down at her new son, all the chaos of an international airport on the edge of foreign invasion fading away as the man’s words hit home. Four-year-old Ruslan lay feverish in his stroller, shallow breaths and pale skin hardly masking the reality that he was near death.
Ruslan, she knew, didn’t have a month left in him ― not in his native Ukraine, anyway.
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“I expected the process to be difficult, but this was difficult in a whole bunch of unexpected ways,” Kelci says. |
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She simply hadn’t expected that a war with Russia would happen right as she and her husband finished up their adoption of Ruslan, a boy with cerebral palsy, epilepsy and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Nor had she anticipated the border guards’ rejection of their court decree’s waiver for the typical 30-day wait. Couldn’t they see how sick Ruslan was?
Their first trip in December hadn’t been so eventful. Sure, Kelci and Theron were a little concerned about what Russia might do, “but everyone [in Ukraine] was living life normally and seemed unconcerned that anything would happen,” Kelci says. So they kept moving forward, determined to adopt a boy code-named Parc who had broken their hearts with his sad visage and resemblance to their biological son.
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The Jagges didn’t even know Ruslan existed until discovering an Instagram page called downrightwonderful in the fall of 2020. The account is run by a Reece’s Rainbow family, and Kelci and Theron soon began surfing through profiles. “Parc” stole their hearts, even earning their first Reece’s Rainbow donation. By December 2021, the San Antonio-area couple had accepted Ruslan’s referral in Ukraine. They knew he was fragile, but February wasn’t too far away; they could get him into a children’s hospital then.
What could go wrong?
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“Meeting Ruslan was so emotional, and we got to visit him several times, which was such a blessing,” Kelci says. “We really enjoyed the people, food and sights in Ukraine.”
But then came February, and Vladimir Putin’s murderous appetites. The Jagges passed court on February 5 and scheduled flights home to Texas on February 12. Ruslan was running a fever, fighting pneumonia and withdrawing from orphanage pharmaceuticals; his new parents were running low on medication. Thousands of Ukrainians, feeling Russia’s warring breath on their necks, crammed into Kyiv’s airport.
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Then came the missed flights and guards’ proclamation. The Jagges feared it was an unintentional death sentence.
That’s when a bold-and-burly angel appeared. His days were numbered ― though anyone who knew him never could have imagined anything or anyone bringing Serge Zevlever down. A Russian sniper’s bullet would slay him less than two weeks later, but Zevlever ― a well-known adoption facilitator for more than 3,500 Ukrainian children ― had a few more souls to save first.
“Without Serge securing a lawyer for us, going with her to fight our case and helping us through the airport, I don't know how we would have gotten our son home in time for him to receive adequate medical care,” Kelci says. “And then I don't know what would have happened when the attacks started, or how we would have gotten out after that point.”
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Zevlever did the seemingly impossible in very quick succession, hiring the aforementioned attorney, helping the Jagges get Covid-19 tests, allaying a gate agent’s fears that Ruslan was too sick to travel and convincing the border guards to let Ruslan leave his homeland on Valentine’s Day. The toddler was the very last to receive an American visa out of the now-war zone. Without Zevlever, it wouldn’t have happened. |
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So when the news came of his death on February 26, Theron and Kelci could hardly process it.
“We just saw him and spent time with him,” they said to each other in disbelief. “He just helped us.”
The couple took Ruslan straight to a Texas emergency room from the airport, where he stayed until March 3. Kelci believes he might not have survived even one more day in Ukraine.
“Looking back on the past year or so now, from the beginning of our adoption process, it is clear now that the Lord had a very intricate plan of getting Ruslan out in the very nick of time,” she says.
Now at home, Ruslan coos and laughs every day.
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Perhaps he knows that the best revenge against an enemy ― even one that caused the death of your rescuer ― is joy. |
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Crystal Kupper is a freelance writer specializing in magazines and special projects. Since earning her journalism degree, she has written for clients such as Zondervan, Focus on the Family and the Salvation Army, among many others. |
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REECE'S RAINBOW | www.reecesrainbow.org |
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