When many of her fellow Muscovites began describing the destruction of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol as a “liberation”, Laura Fernandez’s mind was made up. The star ballerina, who is half Ukrainian and half Spanish, fled Moscow and her position as first soloist with the Stanislavsky Theatre on 20 April.
“It was becoming morally difficult for me to continue my life in Russia, because I was in close contact with my cousin in Mariupol, who is like a brother to me,” Fernandez says, speaking from her new home in Tbilisi, Georgia. “He was telling me all the bad stuff was happening there and then I would tell my friends in Moscow and they would say, ‘No, it’s fine, they’re not killing those guys, they’re saving them’. It got to the point I couldn’t discuss the war any more.”
