Dancer confesses to acid attack on Bolshoi director

Bolshoi soloist Pavel Dmitrichenko has confessed to planning a January acid attack on the famed Russian theatre’s artistic director Sergei Filin, police said Wednesday. He was detained on Tuesday along with two other men. One of the top dancers at Russia’s famed Bolshoi Theatre has confessed to plotting an acid attack that nearly blinded his artistic director Sergei Filin earlier this year, police were quoted as saying on Wednesday. Bolshoi soloist Pavel Dmitrichenko, who has played the evil villain in Swan Lake and the lead in Sergei Prokofiev’s Ivan The Terrible, was detained on Tuesday, along with two other men, the RIA news agency quoted police as saying. Dmitrichenko had confessed to the crime, while the two other men had admitted their involvement - one who threw the jar of acid in Filin’s face and one who drove the getaway car, the Interfax news agency quoted a police spokesman as saying. “The men who possibly ordered and carried out the crime, P. Dmitrechenko and Yu. Zarutsky, as well as the driver A. Lipatov, confessed to guilt in writing and have been detained,” the spokesman was quoted as saying. The attack in a quiet snow-covered Moscow sidestreet outside Filin’s home shocked a country used to violent settling of scores and shone a spotlight on infighting at one of its top cultural institutions.