Maksim Chmerkovskiy Talks ‘Guilt’ and ‘Mixed Emotions’ After Leaving Ukraine

Maksim Chmerkovskiy made it out of Ukraine, even as the Russian invasion continues.

Now, he’s grappling with his emotions over leaving the home country he had just reconnected with in recent months.

The “Dancing with the Stars” alum, who has since boarded a plane, previously posted a lengthy Instagram video about his 23-hour train ride from Kyiv to Warsaw, Poland.

Chmerkovskiy was in a hotel in Warsaw as he reflected on everything that had transpired, saying he had been up for 36 hours straight.

"I'm scared, I'm confused, I'm terrified and I just lived through some s--t that I'm going to need a lot of therapy for,” he said. “But I know this — it's us little guys against the big guy. I don't care how big [Russian President Vladimir Putin] is. I don't care how mean he is. When we're together, I can see what can happen. We can have a little guy finally win and it will be a joint effort and after that, we can figure out how to make sure that there's never again one f--king person, one man, who can do whatever he's doing."

Opening up about his train trip, he described it as something “out of a movie.”

In previous posts he shared that more than 100 people were packed into train cars that normally held 30. Now, in his latest post, he went into further details.

"When the train car got packed and packed and it kept getting more and more packed, I was like, ‘Hold on.’ I'm thinking to myself, ‘There's no air. There's no way that we can travel [this way],’” he said.

He described how he stood on the train for hours, explaining, “I stood because I felt wrong leaving, I felt wrong being on that train, I still feel guilty being on that train. I took up space, probably.” He said he only took his backpack and tried to take up the least amount possible so more people could fit on the train.

Chmerkovskiy, who moved to the U.S. in 1994, said he had a lot of time on the train to ruminate over his feelings.

"I thought about it, my guilt,” he said. “I started to think about this and I came up with this analogy. In '94, I was put up for adoption and I got adopted by a beautiful, young, vibrant, exciting, forward-thinking country and I fell in love and I left Ukraine in '94 [as] a sad, sad person because I felt like I was getting unrooted... I was in this new country. But I turned around and said, 'You know what? This is what I'm going to do.' The 14-year-old Maks, with his family and all the love and support that he had, did stuff, and here we are."

He said when he returned to Ukraine to film “Dancing with the Stars Ukraine,” he felt like he had reconnected with his birthplace, so Maks was having a “very f--king hard time leaving.”

The star added, "I'm having a horrible time. I'm having very mixed emotions," he admitted. "I have my friends there, my friends in [the] frontline... I can't hear from some of the people. I can't get in touch with them. I don't know if they're dead."

Despite leaving, he vowed, "I'm going to need to figure out how to stay productive [and] what I can continue doing.”

The 42-year-old told his fans, "I love you all tremendously. I love that people are paying attention. I love the fact that it f--king yolks you a little bit inside. I love the fact that you get angry because you're like, 'This is wrong.' You get angry because something is wrong and you maybe even want to do something about it. And when everybody does something about it, then it becomes everybody against one person and that's what needs to happen right now."

When Maks does make it back to the U.S., his wife Peta Murgatroyd and son Shai, 5, will be waiting for him.

Yesterday, she shared a video on Instagram of a family photo with a candle burning in front of it. Peta wrote, “I rotated candles and never let them blow out for those 5 days. 24/7 @maksimc I cannot wait to be with you again.”