CNN
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Maksim Chmerkovskiy shares that he made Poland safely out of his native Ukraine.
“Dancing with the Stars” alum Documenting your time in Ukraine During Invasion by Russian army.
In a note posted on her instagram Stories Late on Monday, Chmerkovskiy wrote that he had made it on a train bound for Poland.
“We are hopefully going to Warsaw. The train to Lviv was not an option,” read the note. “The condition of the train station is insane. At first it seems manageable but when it comes time to actually board the train it is very Gets spoiled. Long story but now all I can say is that I’m a grown man with nothing but a bag and it’s painful.”
He wrote that he was squeezed into a train cabin that usually holds no more than three people “along with four adults and 7 children (ages 2-11).”
“This particular wagon usually holds 30 people. We were told we had to fit 135. “The walkways are packed. People everywhere. It’s sweaty and claustrophobic.”
He wrote about an emotional scene he had witnessed.
“It finally broke me when I saw an eight-ish year old boy crying hysterically and not wanting to let his father go,” Chmerkovskiy wrote. “Verbatim: ‘If you stay, I want to stay too because if they kill you I won’t be able to help.
In a later video, the dancer and choreographer reiterated that the train’s cars were packed with over 100 people inside and that they were at a stop outside the Polish border as the train had to change wheels.
“You can’t make it up,” he said.
Chmerkovskiy later posted that after 31 hours without sleep, he had made it to Poland.
“I absolutely have to say this: Polish people are amazing!!!!!,” he wrote in a note. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
According to his representative, Chmerkovskiy, who emigrated to the United States from Ukraine with his family in the 1990s, was in Ukraine last week working on the reality competition series “World of Dance U”.