If Aleks Shliakotin’s parents had insisted on staying in war-torn Ukraine, he could have been narrating a different story today.
After repeatedly begging his parents following reports of a bomb that went off a kilometre from their Kyiv home, they eventually agreed to flee.
They were initially adamant they would be fine hiding out in their old apartment in the leafy suburb of Bucha back in February 2022.
However, the city was invaded by Russian troops, who destroyed it in ruins after his parents had left for Germany, where they 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 their house was destroyed.
“A few weeks after that, there were scenes of people laying on the road with their hands tied, shot in their heads. It’s just … impossible to process. Thank God they left.”
