- Former "
Dancing With the Stars " proMaksim Chmerkovskiy is posting Instagram updates fromUkraine . - Though he lives in the US, he's been in Kyiv working as a judge on their dance competition show.
"Dancing with the Stars" alum Maksim Chmerkovskiy said he's currently "stuck" in Kyiv after Putin authorized a full-scale attack on the country.
On Thursday, the Ukrainian-born professional dancer began updating his 886,000 followers on Instagram about his location and current safety in Ukraine. By Friday, Chmerkovskiy said he had heard it's "not safe" to move towards the border and attempt to leave.
"I'm safe. We haven't been told to move and I'm just following instructions," he said in an Instagram video. "That's all I can say."
Chmerkovskiy was born in Ukraine in 1980 and immigrated to the US with his family in the mid-90s, according to People magazine. He and his brother, Valentin, continued their professional dance career in the US and eventually became contestants on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars." As reported by Us Weekly, Chmerkovskiy had temporarily returned to his home country of Ukraine to serve as a judge on their version of the same TV series.
In his Instagram video update, Chmerkovskiy said he's talking to local friends in Ukraine who tell him the situation is "pretty dire."
"People are being mobilized. The whole country's been called to go to war," he said. "Men, women, boys, these people that I was judging some days ago in dance competitions, are going forward and getting guns and getting deployed to defend the country."
"I'm not reporting the news," Chmerkovskiy continued, adding that she's just sharing his thoughts "from my experience and people that I'm talking to are very aggressively charged."
His brother, Valentin, and wife Peta Murgatroyd have been vocal on their own Instagram accounts, asking for fans and followers to "pray" for Chmerkovskiy's safe return home to the US.
But for now, the professional dancer said he can't even attempt to get home.
"I'm not currently trying to leave," he said on Instagram. "I'm staying here. I'm gonna do my best to make sure I'm as safe as possible, but I am not moving towards the border currently."
Chmerkovskiy said that his friends shared with him "that it's quite dangerous and a lot of senseless activity is going on outside of war stuff" closer to the borders.
On Thursday, a representative for Chmerkovskiy declined to add an additional statement, referring Insider back to Chmerkovskiy's video updates as his official comments.
Russia's conflict with Ukraine has been rumbling for years but escalated dramatically in recent weeks. Russia assembled vast numbers of troops around Ukraine — as many as 190,000, per US estimates — in the largest military operation in the region since World War II.
On Monday, Putin recognized the claims to independence of the breakaway Luhansk and Donetsk areas of Ukraine, ordering troops there for what he described as a limited peacekeeping operation in the east of the country.
Less than 72 hours later, Putin authorized a full-scale attack on Ukraine. In the hours that followed, explosions pounded cities around Ukraine, many hundreds of miles from the previous conflict zone. Ukrainian officials reported fighting on its borders with Russia and dozens of casualties.
Insider's live blog of the invasion is covering developments as they happen.