“Dancing with the Stars” professional Maksim Chmerkovskiy updated his followers before leaving Poland on Wednesday, two days after he fled his native Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion.
Chmerkovskiy shared an Instagram video as he boarded a plane out of Warsaw on Wednesday and said, “Talk to you from L.A.”
“I’m ready to go. I’m at the airport,” Chmerkovskiy said, before expressing his concerns about Ukraine and its people while the country is under attack.
The 42-year-old Chmerkovskiy left Ukraine on Monday, days after Russia’s invasion began, and made it to Warsaw following a 23-hour trip.
He shared a separate video from his hotel room in Poland on Tuesday night, saying he’d been awake for 36 consecutive hours.
“I have a lot to unpack. It’s gonna take a very long time, and the number one priority right now is that the war is just heating up,” the professional dancer said. “I keep seeing reports, and they’re going to get worse.”
Chmerkovskiy, who moved to Brooklyn, New York, in 1994, also shared the guilt he felt after fleeing Ukraine, comparing it to his previous experience of leaving the country.
“I got adopted by a beautiful, young, vibrant, exciting, forward-thinking country, and I fell in love,” Chmerkovskiy said. “I left Ukraine in ‘94 a sad, sad person because I felt like I was getting unrooted.”
He then shared an uplifting message, saying, “the 14-year-old Maks, with his family and all the love and support that he had, did stuff and here we are.”
Chmerkovskiy, who won the 18th season of “Dancing with the Stars” in 2014, has frequently chronicled his experiences on social media since the Russian invasion began.
He described the train station where he departed Ukraine as being a “traumatizing” scene, and called the train “sweaty and claustrophobic.”
“There’s usually up to 30 people in this particular wagon,” Chmerkovskiy wrote on Instagram. “We were told we have to fit 135. Walkways are packed.”
In a video Monday, Chmerkovskiy revealed he was arrested in Ukraine, but didn’t say for what. He added that the arrest was “probably the least traumatizing moment in this whole thing, as far as Ukraine is concerned, but for me, it was just a reality check.”
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