Ukrainian ballet dancer Artem Datsishin has died three weeks after being wounded in a Russian shelling of Kyiv.
Datsyshyn, a former soloist with the National Opera of Ukraine, has died in hospital, according to a Facebook post by his girlfriend Tatiana Borovik. He was 43 years old.
The chief director of the troupe, Anatoly Solovyanenko, honored Datsyshin, calling him a “great artist” and “a wonderful person.”
Russian-American choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, a former soloist in Kyiv and former artistic director of the Bolshoi Ballet Company in Moscow, now based in New York, said that Datsishin died from “wounds sustained on February 26 when he came under fire from Russian artillery” .
The dancer’s death followed reports that Ukrainian veteran actress Oksana Shvets had also died in a rocket attack on an apartment building in Kyiv.
Shvets was a soloist with the city’s Young Theatre, well known both on stage and on screen in Ukraine, where she received one of the country’s highest artistic awards.
Meanwhile, another soloist, Olga Smirnova, a soloist with the Bolshoi Theater, has left Russia and will join the Dutch National Ballet immediately, the company confirmed.
Smirnova, who has a Ukrainian grandfather and describes herself as “a quarter Ukrainian,” recently denounced Russia’s invasion of the country.