Former Dancing with the Stars pro Maksim Chmerkovskiy shared an emotional video on Instagram Thursday from his native Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia late Wednesday night. Chmerkovskiy showed his fans what the situation is for him in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. Chmerkovskiy and his younger brother, fellow DWTS pro Val Chmerkovskiy, were both born in Odesa, Ukraine, and moved to the U.S. with their family in 1994.
“Everyone was hoping that the finality of the situation would be averted,” Chmerkovskiy, 42, said in his first Instagram video from a Kyiv balcony Thursday. “Honestly, I’m getting really emotional. It’s been a little difficult. You know me, I stay strong. And I don’t show it, but I want to go back home.”
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Although Chmerkovskiy is able to leave Ukraine, he asked his fans to think about Ukrainians who are not as privileged as he is. “What I’m realizing is that my friends whose kids are here, whose moms, dads are here, and elderly people are here, they can’t just escape,” the dancer said. “I am not at this point someone who is pleading for someone else’s safety from a far distance, from a safe distance. I’m somebody who’s about to go into a bomb shelter because s-‘s going down.”
Chmerkovskiy also asked his fans to respect his family’s privacy. He did not want them to bombard his wife, Peta Murgatroyd, 35, with questions. Murgatroyd is still in the U.S. with their 5-year-old son, Shai. Instead, Chmerkovskiy told his fans he will do his best to keep them informed on his own Instagram page. He followed through with his promise later Thursday, posting videos from his balcony on his Instagram Story.
In one of his Instagram captions, Chmerkovskiy noted that this situation brought back bad memories from the 1990s when his family fled Ukraine. “Like my old PTSD I’ve finally fixed is coming back,” Chmerkovskiy wrote. “I literally only just forgot about those ‘always on the edge’ feelings and actually started worrying about things like bbq grills. I’m crying as I’m typing this because all man deserves to worry about ‘bbq grills’ and not f-ing war. Hug your loved ones.”
In his second video, Chmerkovskiy spoke about being shocked to see this happen in 2022 and he hoped that Russians would speak out against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions. “This is all one man’s ambition … and however it sounds, however convenient it sounds in Moscow, however comfortable you are where you are in Russia, I just don’t think that this is the right thing and this is the right steps and these are the correct actions,” he said.
During a speech on Thursday, U.S. President Joe Biden announced new economic sanctions on Russia in response to the assault on Ukraine, reports CBS News. The U.S. and its NATO allies plan to meet on Friday to work on their next steps, Biden said. He called the invasion of Ukraine an “unprovoked and unjustified attack.”
