Oleksandr Yakovenko, the former football player of the Ukraine National Team, had an accident in Manisa yesterday while he was coming to Çeşme district of İzmir upon the invitation of his friend in Turkey due to the war. Yakovenko, who survived the accident in which 4 people in the car he collided were taken to the hospital for control, said, “We did not want to leave Ukraine until the last moment, but we saw what was happening in Kharkiv, there were explosions near Kiev. We decided to set out with my family.”
Oleksandr Yakovenko, the former football player of the Ukraine national team, set off from Kiev 8 days ago to come to the Çeşme district of İzmir, upon the invitation of his manager friend Yunus Emre Sayılgan, after the invasion started by Russia. The 34-year-old Yakovenko-led jeep, which came to Turkey yesterday after a difficult journey with his mother, father, grandmother and grandmother and his fiancee, collided with a 16 ZU 808 car under the direction of Özlem Çevik (34) at the Manisa Saruhanlı location on the İzmir-Istanbul Highway. The car, which went out of control due to the impact of the collision, overturned into a stockade on the side of the highway. The injured driver Özlem Çevik and Salim (39), Nisa (5) and Baybars Çevik (9) were discharged by ambulances after their treatment at Saruhanlı State Hospital. Yakovenko and his family, who were in the jeep, survived the accident without injury. Yakovenko stated that when he changed lanes as a result of being squeezed by a car, the car from behind was hit.
“A Russian missile fell on a military facility 50 meters away before we set off”
Stating that he was in Odessa to meet with a club on the first day of the war with Russia’s air attacks, Yakovenko said, “I was the only one left in the hotel when the war started. My flight was canceled due to the closure of the airspace. I decided to take a taxi to Kiev, where we live with my family. Before I set off, A Russian missile fell on a military facility 50 meters away. I was able to return to Kiev in 5 hours, in 11 hours. In the first days of the war, like all Ukrainians, I downloaded an application on my phone. When there was danger, like everyone else, we went down to the bunkers under the apartments. Inside the house, we started to stay away from the windows. Leaving until the last moment “We didn’t want to, but finally we saw what happened in Kharkiv, we saw explosions near Kiev. We decided to set out with my family,” he said.
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“Ukraine will fight to the end”
Yakovenko said, “We could see and hear the explosions at any moment. There was no conflict in the city, but there were Russian sabotage groups. Emre had been calling me and my whole family since the beginning of the war. When the situation started to deteriorate, I decided to leave because my father’s health was bad. I also have Belgian citizenship. More than 50 percent of them are detached. The Russians still can’t enter the city because our army is really strong. They can only bomb the city. Their plan was to take the country in 2-3 days, but it’s been 2 weeks and they haven’t taken the city yet. They just took Kherson. In the rest. “The Ukrainian army and the Ukrainian people are fighting. According to the information we have received, 15,000 Russian soldiers have died in 15 days. This is a higher figure than the Chechen War, the Afghanistan War. It has been more difficult for them than they expected,” he said.
“I would like to thank everyone in Turkey”
Yakovenko stated that their journey from Ukraine to Turkey was very difficult. We hoped that the war would end as soon as possible. After the war is over, I want to cross the same road in peace with my family. I don’t know what the politicians have in mind, but I know that Ukraine will fight to the end. I want to thank everyone in Turkey again. As the people of Ukraine, I love Turkey very much. “I love it. I have very good memories here. My father had a very successful surgery here last year. My father would have died if it weren’t for the doctor and his team who performed the surgery. Even in the accident I had yesterday, everyone was very kind to me,” he said.
His father is also a famous football player.
Oleksandr Yakovenko’s 57-year-old father, Pavlo Yakovenko, is among the legendary football players of Dynamo Kiev. Pavlo Yakovenko, who played in the Kyiv team between 1982-1993 and played for the Soviet Union National Team between 1986-1990, coached the Ukraine U21 National Team with clubs such as Khimki, Kuban Krasnodar, Rostov. Yakovenko passed away after having brain surgery in Bodrum in May last year.
Vida’s former teammate
He played in clubs such as Metalist Kharkiv and Dynamo Kyiv in Ukraine, Lierse, Genk, Anderlecht, Westerlo in Belgium, Fiorentina in Italy, Malaga in Spain, played in many matches in the Champions League and UEFA Europa League and played football in 2016. Oleksandr Yakovenko, who quit, reported that he was a teammate with Beşiktaş’s Croatian football player Domagoj Vida for a while at Dynamo Kiev. Yakovenko also said that they talked to Vida on the phone just one day before the war started.
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