‘Believe’, Oleksandr Zinchenko’s autobiography, was published a few weeks ago.

The story about how he met his wife, Vlada, raises questions about the book’s veracity, even though the most of its anecdotes are easily believed.

Zinchenko maintains that Vlada was one of his friends’ connections on VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, when he first spoke to her online at the age of 14. Following some brief conversation, Oleksandr’s career detours caused the two to lose touch with one another multiple times. After the Ukrainian started playing for Manchester City, they eventually got together.

The 27-year-old talks about Vlada’s 2016 transfer from Russian team Ufa to Man City, mentioning only his “boyfriend.” He continues by saying that ‘everything occurred very quickly’ when he asked Vlada out, and that he got back together ‘a couple of years later’.

But was she indeed unmarried at the time?

It appears that Vlada was still seeing Andrii Boriachuk, a former best friend of Oleksandr’s who has known Zinchenko since their time in the Shakhtar Donetsk academy.

Even though Andrii was formally dating Vlada, the three of them went on vacation together and seemed to have a close relationship back then.

Vlada and Andrii together

After some months, Zinchenko and Sedan were photographed together once more, but this time, Boriachuk, her *ex* lover, was not present. Since then, the three have actually never been spotted together.

Andrii hinted at his feelings for Vlada, Oleksandr, or both when he said, “warmed the snake on my chest,” on Instagram shortly after.

When Zinchenko kissed Vlada, a Ukrainian TV reporter at the time, on the cheek following Ukraine’s significant victory over Serbia, everything became evident.

Since then, the couple’s relationship has been growing significantly, much like Zinchenko’s career, which has seen him play for both Man City and Arsenal. They got married in 2020, had their first child the following year, and celebrated the second in 2023.

With a few loan stints at Turkish and Hungarian teams, Boriachuk, 28, has played the majority of his career in the Ukrainian top division.

The forward recently spoke up about the circumstances involving Vlada and Oleksandr.

“We’re over our three-year relationship with [Vlada].” I still play football, after all. When I broke up, I was pursuing my own interests and attaining goals. A long time ago, I let it go. I have no one to be offended by.

“I don’t communicate with Oleksandr. After something like that, how can we still be friends? If he did it behind my back, how can we be friends? It wasn’t macho. I would have mentioned it in an interview long ago if I had known how it occurred. I can’t really say anything, though, as it is.

“If I met him right now, I’m not sure how I would feel about him. I have my own life, and he has his own. We are not the same. We used to be buddies, but not anymore. We used to be quite close. We went from [Shakhtar Donetsk] U14 to U21 together, and we had a great friendship for a long time.