The Bolshoi Ballet prima ballerina Olga Smirnova has decided to leave the Moscow stage after the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine and to continue her career in the Netherlands. This is reported on the website of the National Ballet of the Netherlands, writes Ekho Kavkaza.

As noted in the press release, Smirnova opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which made it impossible for her to continue working in Russia.

On March 1, the ballerina said in her Telegram channel, "I never thought I would be ashamed of Russia." "It's not even that every other Russian probably has family or friends living in Ukraine, not that my grandfather is Ukrainian and I am one-quarter Ukrainian, but that we continue to live in the 20th century, although nominally we have moved into the 21st. Political issues in today's civilized society should be resolved only through peaceful negotiations," she wrote.

The New York Times notes that Smirnova was one of the most important Russian cultural figures to leave the country because of the war in Ukraine. Olga Smirnova was born in St. Petersburg in 1991. In 2011 she graduated from the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet and was accepted to the Bolshoi Theater.