'Dancing With The Stars' Pro Reveals What Finally Broke Him While Fleeing Ukraine

“Dancing With The Stars ” performer Maksim Chmerkovskiy detailed his “traumatizing” escape from Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion in a series of Instagram stories on Monday.

The Ukrainian American dancer revealed he was on a packed, “sweaty and claustrophobic” train to Warsaw in Poland.

“I’m a big man with nothing but a backpack it’s TRAUMATIZING,” wrote Chmerkovskiy, who was born in Odesa and immigrated to America in 1994.

Chmerkovskiy said the moment that “finally broke” him was seeing a young boy “hysterically crying and not wanting to let go of his father.” 

The son told his father: “If you stay I want to stay too because if they kill you I won’t be able to help,” according to Chmerkovskiy, who was in Ukraine working on the reality series “World of Dance UA.”

In later stories, he revealed he was at a train station some 30 minutes from the Polish border, waiting for the wheels on the locomotive to be adjusted for Poland’s rail network.