Byline: JOHN FRASER; Special to The Globe and Mail

Nearly 50 years ago, in June, 1974, Mikhail Baryshnikov made his dramatic leap to the West by bolting away from a touring Soviet Union ballet company performing in Toronto at what was then called O'Keefe Centre. He gave his first interview in the West after that historic decision to The Globe and Mail, and he donated the fee for his first performance in the West to Canada's National Ballet School. It was in gratitude for the help Canada had given him at the single most pivotal moment in his life, before and after. It was also to this newspaper that he reached out again late this week to express his anger and sadness at the invasion of Ukraine by the deadly war machine of Vladimir Putin.

Of all the most famous artists who fled the old Soviet Union in the last half of the 20th century - from cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, to Nobel laureate poet Joseph Brodsky and fellow dancer Rudolf Nureyev - only Baryshnikov and Natalia Romanovna Makarova remain as witnesses to the stultifying regime that Putin seems keen to revive.

I talked to him over the phone from the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York.

He seemed infinitely sad and infinitely angry at the extraordinary events unfolding in Ukraine and was anxious for people in the West not to paint all Russians with a Putin brush.

You have tried to stay clear of overt politics for most of your professional life.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine seems clearly and dramatically to have changed that sense of caution and keeping your distance.

Am I right?

In 1974, my decision to leave Russia was an abrupt one and came about because of artistic curiosity, anxiety and restlessness.

My...