Suspects Held In Bolshoi Ballet Director Attack

Russian authorities say police have detained the suspected perpetrator of an acid attack on Sergi Filin, the Bolshoi ballet’s artistic director, along with a top dancer at the theater.

The Interior Ministry named the man suspected of carrying out the January attack as Yury Zarutsky.

Bolshoi dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko, whose home was searched on March 5, has also been detained.

The ministry said a driver suspected of complicity in the crime was detained earlier on March 5, without revealing his name.

A masked attacker threw acid in Filin’s face outside his Moscow apartment in January.

The 42-year-old former principal dancer with the Bolshoi and Georgian ballet theaters spent some two weeks in a Moscow hospital getting treatment for burns to his face and having a series of surgeries on his eyes.

He was later moved to Germany for further treatment before being discharged in early February.

Filin has been the Bolshoi Ballet’s artistic director for nearly two years.

He is the sixth artistic director at the Bolshoi since 1995.

Colleagues suggested there was no question that the attack was related to Filin’s work, citing threats he’d received in the past.

With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and Interfax

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