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One of Russia’s most prominent actors, Chulpan Khamatova, fled her country for Latvia, saying she could not stay and “lie to myself, lie to the whole world, live in a lie” about Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Many businesspeople and performers have left Russia, many of them keeping quiet and saying they are “on vacation.” But Khamatova recorded a long interview, posted Sunday on YouTube, in which she said she loved her country and was not a traitor but could not, in good conscience, lie to herself and the world about the war.

“I don’t know how to close my eyes, how not to believe what I see with my own eyes and what my Ukrainian friends tell me,” she said.

Khamatova repeatedly used the word “war,” which has been banned by Russian authorities. They insist on calling Moscow’s actions in Ukraine a “special military operation.”

Khamatova said President Vladimir Putin had “promised me and the whole world there would be no war.” Moving back to Russia, she said, would mean she would be asked “to call black white.”

Her only other choice if she wished to return would be to offer an abject apology for not supporting the war and “to move to a state of complete indifference.”

“And then to play according to the rules that would be dictated to me. That would be the only way for me to get back to Russia and not go to jail,” she said.

Khamatova supported Putin’s 2012 election campaign but said she would not have done so had she known he would back a separatist war in Ukraine’s Donbas region that laid the foundations for his February invasion.

Like many other celebrities, she said her first instinct was to try to “wait it out somewhere.”

But a few prominent figures have denounced the war and departed, including Bolshoi Ballet prima ballerina Olga Smirnova, who left Russia and joined the Dutch National Ballet, stating that she opposed the war “with every fiber of my soul.”

“The hardest part was to make this decision,” Khamatova said, adding that she was ashamed to even think of it as hardship, given the suffering of Ukrainians. “Everything that is the hardest for me is not what is considered hard there.”