Ballet dancer pavel dmitrichenko tsiskaridze

Prominent ballet dancer Nikolai Tsiskaridze on Monday defended the suspected mastermind of the acid attack on the Bolshoi Ballet's artistic director, testifying in court that he could not have been responsible for the attack that left Sergei Filin nearly blind.

At a hearing at Moscow's Meshchansky District Court, Tsiskaridze said Pavel Dmitrichenko, a leading Bolshoi Ballet dancer who stands accused of orchestrating the attack, could not have been behind the attack because he was neither "conflictive" nor "aggressive."

According to Tsiskaridze, while Dmitrichenko disagreed with many of Filin's policies at the theater, so did many other people.

"Artists are often very emotional, and I had often conflicted with Sergei [Filin] but on the level of an artistic dispute," Tsiskaridze told the