Maks Chmerkovskiy.Photo: Maks Chmerkovskiy/ instagram

Maks Chmerkovskiy

Maks Chmerkovskiyis continuing to update his social media followers on therapidly unfolding fighting in Ukraine, sharing footage of himself in the capital of Kyiv on Thursday night saying, “It’s tough, it’s scary … but I’m safe.”

The Ukrainian-born dancer, 42, first posted a series of emotional videos to his Instagram earlier Thursday afternoon local time in which he was seenstanding on a balconyin Kyiv as military sirens could be heard from the streets below.

“Contrary to what I probably should’ve done a while ago … and not that no one saw this coming, but everybody was hoping that the finality of this situation would be averted, that there wasn’t going to be these kind of aggressive measures,” Chmerkovskiy said then of theRussian invasion that had just begun.

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Later in the day, he posted again, sharing more videos in which he was seen standing outside at night.

“The main thing is that I’m safe. But like I said, a lot of people are not, and this is very, very, very real, what’s happening now,” he said. “I’m packed, I’m ready, my hotel has a bomb shelter. We can go there now, but the few of us decided to maybe wait until we hear the sirens and then we’ll be down there.”

Chmerkovskiy added later in the day that he was “feeling very tense,” noting that he was just “blocks away” from a government building — “where this is supposed to be ending.”

“Ukrainians are gonna … put up a huge fight. It’s gonna be bloodshed. People here do not want this regime, whatever it is,” he said.

Russia began its invasion of Ukraine earlier this week, Ukrainian and U.S. officials say, with forces moving from the north, east and south. Details of the fighting continue to emerge but explosions and airstrikes have been reported, with threats mounting against Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million people.

source: people.com