After the Armed Forces of South Russia of general Denikin had taken Kyiv in 1919, Timoshenko moved from Kyiv to Rostov-on-Don. After travel via Novorossiysk, Crimea and Constantinople to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, he arrived in Zagreb, where he got professorship at the Zagreb Polytechnic Institute. In 1920, during the brief liberation of Kyiv from Bolsheviks, Timoshenko travelled to the city, reunited with his family and returned with his family to Zagreb.