Former Dancing With the Stars pro Maksim Chmerkovskiy wants to return to Europe and help his home country of Ukraine after it was attacked by Russia.
“I’m currently working on an opportunity to go back, and so probably some time next week I’m gonna go back to Poland and join the efforts on the ground,” he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Sunday. “And so [I] sort of wanna justify my safe out that way.”
Chmerkovskiy was in the country to consult on TV shows and to film World of Dance UA, when the violence began on Feb. 24. He documented his arduous, five-day journey back to the United States, which he said included his arrest.
He told Cooper that he’d begun his work on Ukrainian projects in September.
“You know, the entire time is the feeling that something is looming. And all the time I was being told that, if something happens, we’ll take you out, you know, you’ll be the first to move out of the country. When everything happened, it happened suddenly… that morning I was literally driving to film and, at 5 a.m., somebody was bombarding my phone, saying, ‘You have to go now,’ right?”
Friends he knew locally were urging him to leave, even as he was “organizing initiatives.”
“I felt really bad going, and the feeling sunk in even worse because when I got to the train station, I realized it’s all women and children,” he said, “and that I’m literally, I’m too big, and I’m taking up space, so I had put myself in between trains.”
Chmerkovskiy, who shares a 5-year-old son with wife Peta Murgatroyd, said he helped others fleeing with their bags to compensate.
In his first TV interview since flying back to the United States, with Good Morning America on Friday, he also noted that the whole thing had taken an emotional toll.
“I’m still very much in that fight or flight,” he said. “I’m a big boy. I know for a fact that I’m going through something mentally… I get into these cry moments. I’m emotional. I can’t control it. I cried on the way from the airport. I felt embarrassed.”
Chmerkovskiy said he feels guilty for all those left behind. According to the UN, more than 1.5 million people have left Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s invasion.
“I spent a couple of days with survivor’s remorse, I believe that’s what it’s called,” he said.
For now, he’s using his social media platform and media appearances, like the one on CNN, to help Ukrainians.
