RIO DE JANEIRO

In February, after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, Brazilian ballet dancer David Motta Soares booked an urgent flight to Turkey and left behind his dream job as soloist at Russia's world-famous Bolshoi ballet.

Fearing that he would not be able to exit Russia as international airlines began to cancel flights in response to the invasion, which Russia calls a "special operation," Motta Soares said he fled to wherever he could.

"I didn't know where to go," he told Reuters on a break from rehearsals in Rio de Janeiro. "I was scared. ... There was no way out."

A few days after his rapid exit from Russia, Motta Soares announced on his Instagram account that he had quit the Bolshoi, "the place I called home for many years."

"I cannot act like nothing is happening," he wrote, adding that his heart with his many friends and their families from Ukraine.

Motta Soares' rushed departure from Russia, and his high-profile exit from the Bolshoi, is indicative of a broad western shunning of Moscow since Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to wage war against his neighbor Ukraine.

Motta Soares, who is about to star in a production of Swan Lake in Rio's iconic Municipal Theater, told Reuters that it was hard to leave Russia, and there were "sad times."

"The Bolshoi is the main company in the world," he said. "It's the company that every ballet dreams about."

But he said it was "nothing compared to what they (in Ukraine) are going through."

Motta Soares said professional considerations also factored into his decision making: he dreams of working with other companies and choreographers in Europe. Staying in Russia was likely to make that impossible, he said.

"Being in Russia, I was scared I could never leave again," he said. "I didn't know what could happen."