Ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov condemns Kremlin's 'world of fear'

Mikhail Baryshnikov, the celebrated ballet dancer who defected from the Soviet Union to the West, has issued a searing criticism of President Putin and the war in Ukraine, accusing him of creating a "world of fear", according to The Times.

Baryshnikov, responded after the Russian authorities banned the website of a charity that he co-founded to benefit victims of the war in Ukraine.

"People like us brought more honour to the Russian world than all your imprecise 'precision' weapons," the dancer said in an open letter to Putin.

"Your Russian world, the world of fear, the world in which they burn Ukrainian textbooks, will not survive as long as there are people like us - immunised in childhood against this plague," he added.

Born in Latvia, Baryshnikov joined Leningrad's Kirov ballet in the late 1960s. He was frustrated at being unable to work with western choreographers because of the Cold War. While on tour with the Bolshoi ballet in Toronto he defected in 1974. He subsequently performed with the American Ballet Theatre and the New York City Ballet.

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Photo Credit: Reinis Inkēns, Saeimas Administrācija, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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