Former Royal Ballet star Sergei Polunin stated he’s leaving Russia along with his household regardless of being a vocal supporter of President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s invasion of his native Ukraine.
“My soul shouldn’t be as a substitute,” Polunin, who was born within the southern Ukrainian metropolis of Kherson and purchased Russian citizenship in 2018, wrote on his Telegram channel late Sunday.
“My time in Russia has expired a very long time in the past, as if I’ve fulfilled my mission right here for now,” he stated. “Russian persons are very sort and humane. It continues to be unclear the place we’ll go subsequent, and I solely hope that the soul will probably be calm and as a substitute.”
According to the RBC information outlet, the dancer complained in the summertime that he had been receiving unsolicited packages within the mail and expressed concern that certainly one of them might include an explosive gadget. It was not instantly clear if his departure from Russia was linked with these issues.
Polunin, 35, has three tattoos of Putin on his chest and shoulders, in addition to a Ukrainian trident on his proper hand. He beforehand helped set up donation drives for Russian troopers combating in Ukraine and was certainly one of Putin’s surrogates throughout the presidential election held earlier this yr.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Polunin’s present was canceled in Italy following on-line backlash, and authorities in Uzbekistan reprimanded him for a pro-war efficiency that deviated from a beforehand agreed program.
In 2010, Polunin grew to become the youngest male principal within the historical past of the Royal Ballet in London, the place he earned a fame as a “unhealthy boy of ballet.” He left for Russia two years later to grow to be a principal dancer at each the Stanislavsky Music Theater in Moscow and the Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet.
Polunin was appointed director of the Sevastopol Opera and Ballet Theater in annexed Crimea in 2019.
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