Maksim Chmerkovskiy safely escaped Ukraine and made it back to the U.S. last week is planning to go back to Europe so that he can help Ukrainians in need.
In a recent interview with CNN, Dancing with the Stars alum revealed to host Anderson Cooper that he wants to return to Eastern Europe.
“I spent the last couple of days with survivor’s remorse, and I’m currently working on an opportunity to go back,” he said during an on-air interview. “Probably sometime next week I’m going to go back to Poland and join efforts on the ground. Sort of want to justify my safe out that way.”
Chmerkovskiy also spoke in detail about being in Ukraine amid the Russian invasion and his days-long evasion.
“It wasn’t really a decision to leave, it was more like I got told that I have to go,” he explained. “The Ukrainian people, in general, they were waiting for this conflict. They were prepared. It was eight years in the making and that was the whole general feeling since I started [working] in Ukraine in September of last year.”
Despite his efforts to organize local initiatives via his phone, Chmerkovskiy said he “still sort of fought that internal feeling” while boarding the train to Poland on Monday.
“I felt really bad going, and the feeling sunk in even worse because when I got to the train station, I realized it was all women and children,” Chmerkovskiy said on CNN.