Val Chmerkovskiy was a lot more worried about his older brother, Maksim Chmerkovskiy, than Maks was about himself when there was talk that Russia could invade Ukraine. But then, on Feb. 24, the violence began, and Maks found himself stuck in the country where the brothers were born and where he had been filming the TV show World of Dance UA.
“He called me, and I’d never seen my brother really be that shook,” Val told his former Dancing With the Stars partner, Olivia Jade Giannulli, on Monday’s episode of her Conversations With Olivia Jade podcast. “My brother… he’s a tough dude. And he had tears in his eyes. I mean, he was really scared. The way I’d describe his emotion is, like, it was fear… It was regret, because he was, like, I really messed up. I should have left a little sooner. I don’t know what to do.’ It was fear, regret and then it was sadness.”
