War: How Ukrainian goalkeeper begged parents to flee country before city was destroyed

Ukrainian professional footballer Aleks Shliakotin has narrated how he begged his parents to flee the country over the ongoing war.

The footballer said he pleaded with his parents to flee the country after Russian bombs went off a kilometer from their Kyiv home.

But, according to him, his parents were adamant believing they would be fine hiding out in their old apartment in the leafy suburb of Bucha back in February 2022.

However, the city was descended upon by Russian troops, who leveled it to ruins but, according to him, thankfully, his parents took to the heels before it all got so bad.

They landed in Germany and are currently awaiting refugee status.

“Days after convincing them, I saw videos of crushed streets — everything looked horrible, like after the Second World War. Then I realised, ‘damn it, this looks very familiar to me,” Shliakotin, a goalkeeper for Hong Kong Premier League club Hong Kong Rangers, told CNN.

“Then the guy in the video says it’s Vokzal’na Street, Bucha,” he said adding that he realised it was the very street where he spent his childhood, attended, and walked thousands of times.

He noted that if his parents had maintained their earlier stand and remained there, they probably would have died because the very house where they lived was destroyed.

“A few weeks after that, there were scenes of people just laying on the road with their hands tied, shot in their heads. It’s just … impossible to process. Thank God they left.”